THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 


Secretum  meum  miM 

FRANCIS  or  ASSISI 


BY 
JAMES   LANE   ALLEN 

AUTHOR  OF   "  THE  BRIDE  OF  THE  MISTLETOE,"    "  THE  CHOIR 
INVISIBLE,"    "A  SUMMER  IN  ARCADY,"  ETC. 


jiork 
THE   MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1910 

Ad  rights  reserved 


ft  v  i  7 

d 

COPYRIGHT,  1910, 
BY  THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY. 

Set  up  and  clectrotyped.     Published  November,  1910. 


J.  S.  Gushing  Co.  —Berwick  &  Smith  Co. 
Norwood,  Mass.,  U.S.A. 


TO  THE  SOWER 


210070 


PREFACE 

THIS  work  now  published  under  the  title  of 
"  The  Doctor's  Christmas  Eve  "  is  the  one  earlier 
announced  for  publication  under  the  title  of  "  A 
Brood  of  the  Eagle." 


vii 


"  The  Doctor,  Herbert  and  Elsie's  father,  our  nearest 
neighbor,  your  closest  friend  now  in  middle  life  —  do  you 
ever  tire  of  the  Doctor  and  wish  him  away  ?  " 

"  The  longer  I  know  him,  the  more  I  like  him,  honor  him, 
trust  him." 

—  The  Bride  of  the  Mistletoe. 


viii 


CONTENTS 

PART  FIRST 

I 

PAGE 

THE  CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE 1 

n 

WHEN  A  SON  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER  .        .      32 

in 

THE  BOOKS  OF  THE  YEAR 69 

IV 
THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS 107 

V 

EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE 195 

PART   SECOND 

I 
Two  OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS  AT  A  WINDOW     .    213 

II 

FOUR  IN  A  CAGE .233 

ix 


X  CONTENTS 

III 

PAGE 

THE  REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT 258 

IV 
TIME-SPIRIT  AND  ETERNAL  SPIRIT     .        ...    271 

V 
WHEN  A  FATHER  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  A  SON      .        .    285 

VI 
LIVING  OUT  THE  YEARS       .        .    •     .        .        .  297 


PART   I 


THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 


THE   CHILDREN   OF   DESIRE 

THE  morning  of  the  twenty-fourth  of  Decem 
ber  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  opened  upon  the 
vast  plateau  of  central  Kentucky  as  a  brilliant 
but  bitter  day  —  with  a  wind  like  the  gales  of 
March. 

Out  in  a  neighborhood  of  one  of  the  wealthiest 
and  most  thickly  settled  counties,  toward  the 
middle  of  the  forenoon,  two  stumpy  figures  with 
movements  full  of  health  and  glee  appeared  on  a 
hilltop  of  the  treeless  landscape.  They  were  the 
children  of  the  neighborhood  physician,  a  man 
of  the  highest  consequence  in  his  part  of  the 
world ;  and  they  had  come  from  their  home,  a 
white  and  lemon-colored  eighteenth-century 
manor  house  a  mile  in  their  rear.  Through  the 
crystalline  air  the  chimneys  of  this  low  struc 
ture,  rising  out  of  a  green  girdle  of  cedar  trees, 
could  be  seen  emptying  unusual  smoke  which 
the  wind  in  its  gambolling  pounced  upon  and 
jerked  away  level  with  the  chimney-tops. 


2  THE  DOCTOR'S   CHRISTMAS  EVE 

But  if  you  had  stood  on  the  hill  where  the 
two  children  climbed  into  view  and  if  your  eye 
could  have  swept  round  the  horizon  with  ade 
quate  radius  of  vision,  it  would  everywhere  have 
been  greeted  by  the  same  wondrous  harmonious 
spectacle :  out  of  the  chimneys  of  all  dwellings 
scattered  in  comfort  and  permanence  over  that 
rich  domestic  land  —  a  land  of  Anglo-Saxon 
American  homes  —  more  than  daily  winter 
smoke  was  pouring:  one  spirit  of  preparation, 
one  mood  of  good  will,  warmed  houses  and 
hearts.  The  whole  visible  heaven  was  receiving 
the  incense  of  Kentucky  Christmas  fires;  the 
whole  visible  earth  was  a  panorama  of  the 
common  peace. 

The  two  dauntless,  frost-defying  wayfarers  — 
what  Emerson,  meeting  them  in  the  depths  of  a 
New  England  winter,  might  have  called  two 
scraps  of  valor  —  were  following  across  fields 
and  meadows  and  pastures  one  of  the  footpaths 
which  children  who  are  friendly  neighbors 
naturally  make  in  order  to  get  to  each  other, 
as  the  young  of  wild  creatures  trace  for  them 
selves  upon  the  earth  some  new  map  of  old 
hereditary  traits  and  cravings.  For  the  goal 
of  their  journey  they  were  hurrying  toward  a 
house  not  yet  in  sight  but  hardly  more  than  a 
mile  ahead,  where  they  were  to  spend  Christmas 


THE  CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  3 

Day  and  share  in  an  old  people's  and  children's 
Christmas-Tree  party  on  Christmas  Night  — 
and  where  also  they  were  to  put  into  execution 
a  plot  of  their  own  :  about  which  a  good  deal  is 
to  be  narrated. 

They  were  thus  transferring  the  nation's 
yearly  festival  of  the  home  from  their  own  roof- 
tree  to  that  of  another  family  as  the  place  where 
it  could  be  enacted  and  enjoyed.  The  tragical 
meaning  of  this  arrangement  was  but  too  well 
understood  by  their  parents.  To  them  the 
abandonment  of  their  own  fireside  at  the  season 
when  its  bonds  should  have  been  freshened  and 
deepened  scarcely  seemed  an  unnatural  occur 
rence.  The  other  house  had  always  been  to 
them  as  a  secondary  home.  It  was  the  residence 
of  their  father's  friend,  a  professor  in  the  State 
University  situated  some  miles  off  across  fine 
country.  His  two  surviving  children,  a  boy  and 
a  girl  of  about  their  own  ages,  had  always  been 
their  intimate  associates.  And  the  woman  of 
that  household  —  the  wife,  the  mother  —  all 
their  lives  they  had  been  mysteriously  impelled 
toward  this  gentlewoman  by  a  power  of  which 
they  were  unconscious  but  by  which  they  had 
been  swayed. 

The  little  girl  wore  a  crimson  hood  and  a 
brown  cloak  and  the  boy  a  crimson  skull  cap 


4  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

and  a  brown  overcoat ;  and  both  wore  crimson 
mittens;  and  both  were  red-legged  and  red- 
footed;  for  stockings  had  been  drawn  over 
their  boots  to  insure  warmth  and  to  provide 
safeguard  against  slipping  when  they  should 
cross  the  frozen  Elkhorn  or  venture  too  friskily 
on  silvery  pools  in  the  valley  bottoms. 

The  chestnut  braids  of  the  girl  falling  heavily 
from  under  her  hood  met  in  a  loop  in  the  middle 
of  her  broad  fat  back  and  were  tied  there  with 
a  snip  of  ribbon  that  looked  like  a  feather  out 
of  the  wing  of  a  bluejay.  Her  bulging  hips 
overreached  the  borders  of  the  narrow  path, 
so  that  the  boy  was  crowded  out  upon  the  rough 
ground  as  he  struggled  forward  close  beside  her. 
She  would  not  allow  him  to  walk  in  front  of 
her  and  he  disdained  to  walk  behind. 

"Then  walk  beside  me  or  go  back!"  she 
had  said  to  him,  laughing  carelessly. 

She  looked  so  tight  inside  her  wrappings,  so 
like  a  jolly  ambulatory  small  barrel  well  hooped 
and  mischievously  daubed  here  and  there  with 
vermilion,  that  you  might  have  had  misgivings 
as  to  the  fate  of  the  barrel,  were  it  to  receive 
a  violent  jolt  and  be  rolled  over.  No  thought 
of  such  mishap  troubled  her  as  she  trotted  for 
ward,  balancing  herself  as  lightly  on  her  cush 
ioned  feet  as  though  she  were  wind-carried 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  5 

thistledown.  Nor  was  she  disturbed  by  her 
selfishness  in  monopolizing  the  path  and  forcing 
her  brother  to  encounter  whatsoever  the  winter 
earth  obtruded  —  stumps  of  forest  trees,  bram 
bles  of  blackberry,  sprouts  of  cane,  or  stalks 
of  burdock  and  of  Spanish  needle.  His  footing 
was  especially  troublesome  when  he  tried  to 
straddle  wide  corn-rows  with  his  short  legs; 
or  when  they  crossed  a  hemp-field  where  the 
butt-ends  of  the  stalks  serried  the  frost-gray 
soil  like  bayonet  points.  Altogether  his  exer 
tions  put  him  out  of  breath  somewhat,  for  his 
companion  was  fleet  and  she  made  no  allowance 
for  his  delays  and  difficulties. 

Her  hands,  deep  in  the  fleece-lined  mittens, 
were  comfortably  warm;  but  she  moreover 
kept  them  thrust  into  a  muff  of  white  fur,  which 
also  looked  overfed  and  seemed  of  a  gay  har 
mony  with  its  owner.  This  muff  she  now  and 
then  struck  against  her  flexed  knees  in  a  vixen 
ish  playfulness  as  one  beats  a  tambourine  on 
a  bent  elbow;  and  at  a  certain  point  of  the 
journey,  having  glanced  sidewise  at  him  and 
remarked  his  breath  on  the  icy  air,  she  lifted 
it  to  her  mouth  and  spoke  guardedly  from 
behind  it :  — 

"  Remember  the  last  thing  Papa  told  us  at 
the  window,  Herbert :  we  were  to  keep  our 


6  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

mouths  closed  and  to  breathe  through  our 
noses.  And  remember  also,  my  child,  that  we 
were  to  rely  upon  —  especially  to  rely  upon  — • 
the  ribs  and  the  diaphragm!  I  wonder  why 
he  thought  it  necessary  to  tell  us  that!  Did  he 
suppose  that  as  soon  as  we  got  by  ourselves 
or  arrived  at  the  Ousleys',  we'd  begin  to  rely 
upon  something  else,  and  perhaps  try  to  breathe 
with  our  spines  and  elbows?" 

Her  eyes  sparkled  with  mischief,  and  her 
laughter  had  the  audacity  of  a  child's  satire, 
often  more  terrible  in  its  small  world  than  a 
sage's  in  his  larger  one.  The  instant  she  spoke, 
you  recognized  the  pertness  and  precocity  of 
an  American  child  —  which,  when  seen  at  its 
best  or  at  its  worst,  is  without  precedent  or 
parallel  among  the  world's  children.  She  was 
the  image  of  a  hard  bold  crisp  newness.  Her 
speech  was  new,  her  ideas  were  new,  her  imperti 
nence  was  new  —  except  in  this  country.  She 
appeared  to  have  gathered  newness  during  her 
short  life,  to  be  newer  than  the  day  she  was  born. 
The  air  was  full  of  frost  spangles  that  zigzagged 
about  her  as  she  danced  along;  they  rather 
seemed  like  particles  of  salt  especially  provided 
to  escort  her  character.  If  it  had  been  granted 
Lot's  wife  with  tears  of  repentance  to  dissolve 
away  the  crystals  of  her  curiosity  and  resume 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  7 

the  duties  of  motherhood,  —  though  possibly 
permeated  by  a  mild  saline  solution  as  a  warn 
ing,  —  that  salt-cured  matron  might  admirably 
have  adapted  herself  to  the  decrees  of  Provi 
dence  by  producing  Elsie. 

The  boy  as  she  administered  her  caution 
stopped ;  and  shutting  his  own  red  mouth, 
which  was  like  hers  though  more  generous, 
he  drew  a  long  breath  through  his  nostrils; 
then,  throwing  back  his  head,  he  blew  this  out 
with  an  open-mouthed  puff,  and  a  column  of 
white  steam  shot  up  into  the  blue  ether  and 
was  whirled  away  by  the  wind.  He  stood 
studying  it  awhile  as  it  disappeared,  for  he  was 
a  close  observer  always  —  a  perpetual  watcher 
of.  the  thing  that  is  —  sometimes  an  observer 
fearful  to  confront.  Then  he  sprang  forward 
to  catch  up  with  his  sharp-tongued  monitress, 
who  had  hurried  on.  As  he  came  alongside, 
he  turned  his  face  toward  her  and  made  his 
reply,  which  was  certainly  deliberate  enough  in 
arriving :  — 

"We  have  to  be  taught  the  best  way  to  breathe, 
Elsie ;  as  anything  else ! " 

The  defence  only  brought  on  a  fresh 
attack :  — 

"  I  wonder  who  teaches  the  young  of  other 
animals  how  to  breathe !  I  should  like  to  know 


8  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

who  teaches  kittens  and  puppies  and  calves 
and  lambs  how  to  breathe !  How  do  they  ever 
manage  to  get  along  without  country  doctors 
among  them !  Imagine  a  middle-aged  sheep 
—  old  Dr.  Buck  —  assembling  a  flock  of  lambs 
and  trying  to  show  them  how  to  breathe!" 
Judging  from  Elsie's  expression,  the  lambs  in 
the  case  could  not  have  thought  very  highly  of 
this  queer  and  genial  Dr.  Buck. 

"But  they  are  all  four-legged  creatures,  Elsie ; 
and  they  breathe  backward  and  forward;  if 
you  are  a  two-legged  animal  and  stand  up 
straight,  you  breathe  up  and  down:  it's  quite 
different!  It's  easier!" 

"Then  I  suppose  the  fewer  legs  a  thing  has, 
the  harder  it  is  to  get  its  breath.  And  I  sup 
pose  if  we  ventured  to  stand  on  one  leg,  we'd 
all  soon  suffocate!  Dear  me!  why  don't  all 
one-legged  people  die  at  once!" 

The  lad  looked  over  the  field  of  war  on  which 
it  would  seem  that  he  was  being  mowed  down 
by  small-gun  fire  before  he  could  get  his  father's 
heavy  artillery  into  action.  He  decided  to 
terminate  the  wordy  engagement,  a  prudential 
manoeuvre  of  the  wiser  head  but  slower  tongue. 

"Father  is  right,"  he  declared.  His  manner 
of  speaking  was  sturdy  and  decisive :  it  was 
meant  to  remind  her  first  that  he  had  enough 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  9 

gallantry  as  a  male  to  permit  her  to  crowd 
him  out  of  the  path;  but  that  the  moment  a 
struggle  for  mental  footing  arose  between  them, 
he  reserved  the  whole  road :  the  female  could 
take  to  the  weeds!  He  notified  her  also  that 
he  stood  with  his  father  not  only  in  this  puzzling 
question  of  legs  and  parlous  types  of  respiration, 
but  that  the  men  in  the  family  were  regularly 
combined  against  the  women  —  like  good  or 
ganized  against  evil! 

But  now  something  further  had  transpired. 
Had  there  been  present  on  the  winter  fields 
that  morning  an  ear  trained  to  separate  our 
complex  human  tones  into  simple  ones  —  to 
disengage  one  from  another  the  different  fibres 
of  meaning  which  always  make  up  even  the 
slenderest  tendril  of  sound  (as  there  is  a  cluster 
of  grapes  to  a  solitary  stem),  it  might,  as  it 
noted  one  thing,  have  discovered  another. 
While  the  boy  asserted  his  father  to  be  right 
in  the  matter  they  were  debating,  there  escaped 
from  him  an  accent  of  admission  that  his  father 
was  wrong  —  wrong  in  some  far  graver  affair 
which  was  his  discovery  and  his  present  trouble. 

Therefore  his  voice,  which  should  have  been 
buoyant,  for  the  instant  was  depressed ;  and 
his  face,  which  should  have  been  a  healthy 
boy's  happy  face,  was  overcast  as  by  a  foreign 


10  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

interference.  You  might  have  likened  it  to  a 
small  luminary  upon  the  shining  disk  of  which 
a  larger  body,  traversing  its  darkened  orbit, 
has  just  begun  to  project  a  wavering  shadow. 
And  thus  some  patient  astronomer  of  our  inter- 
orbited  lives,  sweeping  the  spiritual  heavens 
for  signs  of  its  pendent  mysteries,  here  might 
have  arrested  his  telescope  to  watch  the  portent 
of  a  celestial  event :  was  there  to  take  place  the 
eclipse  of  a  son  by  a  father  ? 

Certainly  at  least  this  weight  of  responsibility 
on  the  voice  must  have  caused  it  to  strike  only 
the  more  winningly  upon  any  hearer.  It  was 
such  a  devoted,  loyal  voice  when  he  thus  spoke 
of  his  father,  with  a  curious  quavering  huskiness 
of  its  own,  as  though  the  bass  note  of  his  distant 
manhood  were  already  beginning  to  clamor 
to  be  heard. 

The  voice  of  the  little  girl  contrariwise  was  a 
shrill  treble.  Had  you  first  become  aware  of 
it  at  your  back,  you  must  instantly  have  wheeled 
to  investigate  the  small  creature  it  came  from, 
as  a  wild  animal  quickly  turns  to  face  any  sound 
that  startles  its  instincts.  Voltaire  might  have 
had  such  a  voice  if  he  had  been  a  little  girl. 
Yet  to  look  at  her,  you  would  never  have 
imagined  that  anything  but  the  honey  of  speech 
could  have  dripped  from  so  perfect  a  little  rose. 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  11 

(Many  surprises  await  mankind  behind  round 
amiable  female  faces :  shrews  are  not  all  thin.) 

Instead  of  being  silenced  by  her  brother's  ulti 
matum,  she  did  not  deign  to  notice  it,  but  con 
tinued  to  direct  her  voluble  satire  at  her  father — 
quite  with  the  air  of  saying  that  a  girl  who  can 
satirize  a  parent  is  not  to  be  silenced  by  a  son. 

"  .  .  .  forever  telling  us  that  American 
children  must  have  the  newest  and  best  way  of 
doing  everything.  .  .  .  My,  my,  my !  The 
working  of  our  jaws  !  And  the  drinking  and 
the  breathing;  and  the  stretching  and  the 
bending :  developing  everything  we  have  — 
and  everything  we  haven't!  I  am  even  trying 
now  to  find  an  original  American  way  to  go 
to  sleep  at  night  and  to  wake  up  in  the  morning! 
Dear  me,  but  old  people  can  be  silly  without 
knowing  it!"  She  laughed  with  much  self- 
approval. 

For  Elsie  had  already  entered  into  one  of 
mankind's  most  dependable  recreations  —  the 
joy  of  listening  to  our  own  words :  into  that 
economic  arrangement  of  nature  whereby  what 
soever  a  human  being  might  lose  through  the 
vocal  cords  is  returned  to  the  owner  along  the 
auditory  nerve!  So  that  a  woman  can  eat  her 
colloquial  cake  times  over:  and  each  time, 
having  devoured  it,  can  return  it  to  the  store- 


12  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

room  and  have  it  brought  out  as  whole  and  fresh 
as  ever  —  sometimes  actually  increased  in  size. 
And  a  man  can  send  his  vocal  Niagara  through 
his  whirlpool  rapids  and  catch  it  again  above 
the  falls!  The  more  gold  the  delver  unearths, 
the  more  he  can  empty  back  into  the  thinking 
mine.  One  can  sit  in  his  own  cranial  theatre 
and  produce  his  own  play  :  he  can  be  stage  and 
orchestra,  audience  and  critic ;  and  he  can  see 
that  the  claque  does  not  get  drowsy  and  slack  : 
it  never  does  —  in  this  case! 

The  child  now  threw  back  her  round  winter- 
rose  of  a  face  and  started  along  the  path  with  a 
fresh  outburst  of  speed  and  pride.  Access  of 
impertinence  seemed  to  have  released  in  her 
access  of  vitality.  Perhaps  it  had.  Perhaps 
it  always  does.  Perhaps  life  itself  at  the  full 
is  sheer  audacity. 

The  lad  scrambled  roughly  along,  and  merely 
repeated  the  words  that  sufficed  for  him :  — 

" Father  knows." 

Suddenly  he  gave  a  laughing  outcry,  and  stood 
still. 

"Look!"  he  called  out,  with  amusement  at 
his  plight. 

He  had  run  into  some  burdock,  and  the  nettles 
had  stuck  to  his  yarn  stockings  like  stinging 
bees  —  a  cluster  of  them  about  his  knees  and 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  13 

calves.  He  drew  off  Ms  gloves,  showing  the 
strong,  overgrown  hands  of  boyhood :  they, 
like  his  voice,  seemed  impatiently  reaching  out 
for  maturity. 

When  he  overtook  his  companion,  who  had 
not  stopped,  he  had  transferred  a  few  of  the  burrs 
to  his  skull  cap.  He  had  done  this  with  crude 
artistry  —  from  some  faint  surviving  impulse 
of  primitive  man  to  decorate  his  body  with 
things  around  him  in  nature :  especially  his 
head  (possibly  he  foresaw  that  his  head 
would  be  most  struck  at).  The  lad  was  pleased 
with  his  caper;  and,  smiling,  thrust  his  head 
across  her  path,  expecting  her  to  take  sympa 
thetic  notice.  He  had  reason  to  expect  this, 
because  on  dull  rainy  days  at  home  he  often 
amused  her  with  the  things  he  did  and  the  things 
he  made :  for  he  was  a  natural  carpenter  and 
toy-maker.  But  now  she  took  only  the  con 
temptuous  notice  of  disapproval.  This  morn 
ing  her  mind  was  intent  on  playthings  of  positive 
value :  she  was  a  little  travelling  ten-toed 
pagoda  of  holiday  greed.  Every  Christmas  she 
prepared  for  its  celebration  with  a  balancing 
eye  to  what  it  would  cost  her  and  what  it  would 
bring  in  :  she  always  calculated  to  receive  more 
than  she  gave :  for  Elsie,  the  Nativity  must 
be  made  to  pay! 


14  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

He  resented  her  refusal  to  approve  his  play 
fulness  by  so  much  as  a  smile,  and  he  came 
back  at  her  by  doing  worse :  — 

"Why  didn't  I  think  to  bring  all  the  burrs 
along  an4  make  a  Christmas  basket  for  Eliza 
beth?  Now  what  will  I  give  her?" 

This  drew  out  a  caustic  comment  quickly 
enough :  — 

"Poor  Elizabeth!" 

A  child  resents  injustice  with  a  blow  or  rage 
or  tears :  the  old  have  learned  to  endure  with 
out  a  sign  —  waiting  for  God's  day  of  judgment 
(or  their  first  good  opportunity!). 

He  was  furious  at  the  way  she  said  "Poor 
Elizabeth" — as  though  Elizabeth's  hands  would 
be  empty  of  gifts  from  him. 

"You  know  I  have  bought  my  presents  for 
Elizabeth,  Elsie!"  he  exclaimed.  "But  Eliza 
beth  thinks  more  of  what  I  make  than  of  what 
I  buy,"  he  continued  hotly.  "And  the  less  it 
is  worth,  the  more  she  values  it.  But  you  can't 
understand  that,  Elsie!  And  you  needn't  try!" 

The  little  minx  laughed  with  triumph  that 
she  had  incensed  him. 

"I  don't  expect  to  try!"  she  retorted  blithely. 
"I  don't  see  that  I'd  gain  anything,  if  I  did 
understand.  You  and  Elizabeth  are  a  great 
deal  too— " 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  15 

He  interrupted  overbearingly  :  — 

"Leave  Elizabeth  out!  Confine  your  re 
marks  to  me!" 

"My  remarks  will  be  wholly  unconfined," 
said  Elsie,  as  she  trotted  forward. 

He  scrambled  alongside  in  silent  rage.  Per 
haps  he  was  thinking  of  his  inability  to  reach 
protected  female  license.  He  may  obscurely 
have  felt  that  life's  department  of  justice  was 
being  balked  at  the  moment  by  its  department 
of  natural  history  —  a  not  uncommon  inter 
ference  in  this  too  crowded  world.  At  least 
he  put  himself  on  record  about  it :  — 

"If  you  were  a  boy,  Elsie,  you'd  get  taken 
down  a  buttonhole!" 

"Don't  you  worry  about  my  buttonholes!" 
chirped  Elsie.  "My  buttonholes  are  where 
they  ought  to  be!" 

It  was  not  the  first  tune  that  he  had  made 
something  of  this  sort  for  Elizabeth.  One  morn 
ing  of  the  May  preceding  he  had  pulled  apart 
the  boughs  of  a  blooming  lilac  bush  in  the  yard, 
and  had  seen  a  nest  with  four  pale-green  eggs. 
That  autumn  during  a  ramble  hi  the  woods 
and  fields  he  had  taken  burrs  and  made  a  nest 
and  deposited  in  it  four  pale-green  half-ripe 
horse  chestnuts. 

Elizabeth,  who  did  not  amount  to  much  in 


16  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

this  world  but  breath  and  a  soft  cloud  of  hair 
and  sentiment,  had  loyally  carried  it  off  to  her 
cabinet  of  nests.  These  were  duly  arranged 
on  shelves,  and  labelled  according  to  species 
and  life  and  love:  "The  Meadow  Lark's'7 
"The  Blue-bird's"  — "The  Orchard  Oriole's" 
—  "The  Brown  Thrasher's"  ;  on  and  on  along 
the  shelves.  At  the  end  of  a  row  she  placed 
this  treasured  curiosity,  and  inscribed  it,  "An 
Imitation  by  a  Young  Animal." 

Elizabeth's  humor  was  a  mild  beam. 

Do  country  children  in  that  part  of  the  world 
make  such  playthings  now?  Do  they  still 
look  to  wild  life  and  not  wholly  to  the  shops 
of  cities  for  the  satisfying  of  their  instincts  for 
toys  and  games  and  fancies  ? 

Do  alder  stalks  still  race  down  dusty  country 
lanes  as  thoroughbred  colts,  afterwards  to  be 
tied  in  their  stalls  in  fence  corners  with  halters 
of  green  hemp?  Does  any  little  rustic  instru 
ment-maker  now  draw  melodies  from  a  home 
grown  corn-stalk?  Across  rattling  window- 
panes  of  old  farm-houses  —  between  withered 
sashes  —  during  long  winter  nights  does  there 
sound  the  seolian  harp  made  with  a  hair  from 
a  horse-tail?  Do  boys  still  squeeze  the  red 
juice  of  poke-berries  on  the  plumage  of  white 
barnyard  roosters,  thus  whenever  they  wish 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  17 

bringing  on  a  cock-fight  between  old  far- 
squandered  Cochins,  who  long  previously  had 
entered  into  a  treaty  as  to  their  spheres  of 
influence  in  a  Manchuria  of  hens?  Do  the 
older  boys  some  wet  night  lead  the  youngest 
around  the  corner  of  the  house  in  the  darkness 
and  show  him,  there  !  rising  out  of  the  ground  ! 
the  long  expected  Devil  come  at  last  (as  a  pump 
kin  carved  and  candle-lighted)  for  his  own 
particular  urchin  ?  When  in  autumn  the  great 
annual  ceremony  of  the  slaughter  of  the  swine 
takes  place  on  the  farms  at  the  approach  of  the 
winter  solstice,  —  a  festival  running  back  to 
aboriginal  German  tribes  before  the  beginnings 
of  agriculture,  when  the  stock  that  had  been 
fattened  on  the  mast  and  pasturage  of  the  moun 
tains  was  driven  down  into  the  villages  and 
perforce  killed  to  keep  it  from  starving, — when 
this  carnival  of  flesh  recurs  on  Kentucky  farms, 
do  boys  with  turkey-quills  or  goose-quills  blow 
the  bladders  up,  tie  the  necks  and  hang  them  in 
smoke-houses  or  garrets  to  dry;  and  then  at 
daybreak  of  Christmas  morning,  having  warmed 
and  expanded  them  before  the  fire,  do  they 
jump  on  them  and  explode  them  —  a  primi 
tive  folk-rite  for  making  a  magnificent  noise 
ages  older  than  the  use  of  crackers  and 
cannon  ? 


18  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Do  children  contrive  their  picture-frames  by 
glueing  October  acorns  and  pine-cones  to  ovals 
of  boards  and  giving  the  mass  a  thick  coat  of 
varnish  ?  On  winter  nights  do  little  girls  count 
the  seeds  of  the  apples  they  are  eating  and  pro 
nounce  over  them  the  incantation  of  their  des 
tinies —  thus  in  another  guise  going  through 
the  same  charm  of  words  that  Marguerite  used  as 
she  scattered  earthward  the  petals  of  trust  and 
ruin  ?  Do  they,  sitting  face  to  face  bareheaded 
on  sun-hued  meadows,  pluck  the  dandelion 
when  its  seed  are  clustered  at  the  top  like  a  ball 
of  gauze,  and  with  one  breath  try  to  blow  these 
off :  for  the  number  of  seed  that  remain  will 
tell  the  too  many  years  before  they  shall  be 
asked  hi  marriage  ?  Do  they  slit  the  stems  and 
cast  them  into  the  near  brook  and  watch  them 
form  into  ringlets  and  floating  hair  —  as  of  a 
water  spirit?  Do  they  hold  buttercups  under 
each  other's  chins  to  see  who  likes  butter  — 
that  is,  mind  you,  good  butter!  Romping  lit 
tle  Juliets  of  Nature's  proud  courtyards  —  with 
young  Montagues  watching  from  afar!  Sane 
little  Ophelias  of  the  garland  at  the  water's 
brink  —  secure  for  many  years  yet  from  all  sad 
Hamlets!  Do  country  children  do  such  things 
and  have  such  notions  now  ? 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  19 

Perhaps  once  in  a  lifetime,  on  some  summer 
day  when  the  sky  was  filled  with  effulgence  and 
white  clouds,  you  may  have  seen  a  large  low- 
flying  bird  cross  the  landscape  straight  away 
from  you,  so  exactly  poised  under  the  edge  of 
a  cloud,  that  one  of  the  wings  beat  in  shadow 
while  the  other  waved  in  light.  Thus  these 
two  children,  following  their  path  over  the  fields 
that  morning,  ran  along  the  dividing-line  be 
tween  the  darkness  and  the  light  of  their  world. 

On  one  side  of  them  lay  the  thinning  shadow 
of  man's  ancient  romance  with  Nature  which 
is  everywhere  most  rapidly  dying  out  in  this 
civilization  —  the  shadow  of  that  romance 
which  for  ages  was  the  earliest  ray  of  his  reli 
gion  :  in  later  centuries  became  the  splendor 
of  his  art;  then  loomed  as  the  historic  back 
ground  of  his  titanic  myths  and  fables ;  and 
now  only  in  obscure  valleys  is  found  lingering 
in  the  play  of  superstitious  children  at  twilights 
before  darkness  engulfs  them  —  the  latest  of 
the  infants  in  the  dusk  of  the  oldest  gods. 

On  the  other  side  blazed  the  hard  clear  light 
of  that  realism  of  human  life  which  is  the  un 
folding  brightness  of  the  New  World ;  that 
light  of  reason  and  of  reasonableness  which 
seems  to  take  from  man  both  his  mornings  and 
his  evenings,  with  all  their  half-lights  and  their 


20  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

mysteries ;  and  to  leave  him  only  a  perpetual 
noonday  of  the  actual  in  which  everything 
loses  its  shadow.  So  the  two  ran  that  morning. 
But  so  children  ever  run  —  between  the  fresh 
light  and  the  old  darkness  of  ever-advancing 
humanity  —  between  the  world's  new  birth 
and  a  forgetting. 

On  the  brother  and  sister  skipped  and 
bounded,  wild  with  health  and  Christmas  joy. 
Their  quarrel  was  in  a  moment  forgotten  — 
happy  children!  The  nature  of  the  little  girl 
was  not  deep  enough  to  remember  a  quarrel; 
the  boy's  nature  was  too  deep  to  remember  one. 
Crimson-tipped,  madcap,  winter  spirits!  The 
blue  dome  vaulting  infinitely  above  them  with 
all  its  clouds  pushed  aside ;  the  wind  throwing 
itself  upon  them  at  every  step  like  some  huge 
young  animal  force  unchained  for  exercise  and 
rude  in  its  good-natured  play.  As  they  crossed 
a  woodland  pasture  the  hoary  trees  rocked 
and  roared,  strewing  in  their  path  bits  of  bark 
and  rotten  twigs  and  shattered  sprigs  of  mistle 
toe.  In  an  open  meadow  a  yellow-breasted 
lark  sprang  reluctantly  from  its  cuddling-place 
and  drifted  far  behind  them  on  the  rushing  air. 
In  a  corn-field  out  of  a  dried  bunch  of  partridge 
grass  a  rabbit  started  softly  and  went  bobbing 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  21 

away  over  the  corn-rows  —  with  its  white  flag 
run  up  at  the  rear  end  of  the  fortifications  as  a 
notice  "  Please  not  to  shoot  or  otherwise  tres 
pass!"  Alas,  that  so  palpable  and  polite  a 
request  should  be  treated  as  so  plain  a  target! 

Once  the  little  girl  changed  her  trotting  gait 
to  a  walk  nearly  as  fast,  so  that  her  skirts  swished 
from  side  to  side  of  her  plump  hips  with  wren- 
like  energy  and  briskness.  Her  mind  was  still 
harping  on  her  father;  and  having  satirized 
him,  and  adoring  him,  she  now  would  fain 
approve  him. 

"My!  but  it's  cold,  Herbert !  Papa  says  it  is 
not  sickness  that  plays  havoc  with  you  :  it's  not 
being  ready  for  sickness  ;  and  being  ready  depends 
upon  how  you  have  lived  :  it  depends  upon  what 
you  are;  and  that's  where  your  virtue  comes  in, 
my  child,  if  you  have  any  virtue.  We  have  been 
taught  to  stay  out  of  doors  when  it  is  cold ;  and 
now  we  can  come  out  when  it  is  colder.  We 
were  ready  for  the  crisis!"  and  Elsie  pushed  her 
nose  into  the  air  with  smallish  amusement. 

The  boy  gravely  pondered  her  words  about 
crisis,  and  pondered  his  own  before  replying  :  — 

"I  wonder  what  kind  of  children  we'd  have 
been  if  we'd  had  some  other  father.  Or  some 
other  mother"  he  added  with  a  change  of  tone 
as  he  uttered  that  last  word;  and  he  looked 


22  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

askance  at  his  sister  to  see  whether  she  would 
glance  at  him. 

She  kept  her  face  set  straight  forward;  but 
she  impatiently  exclaimed  :  — 

" Others,  others,  others!  You  are  always 
thinking  of  others,  Herbert!" 

"I  am  one  of  them  myself!  I  am  one  of  the 
others  myself!"  cried  the  boy,  relieved  that  his 
secret  was  his  own;  and  bounding  suddenly 
on  the  earth  also  as  if  with  a  sense  of  his  kinship 
to  its  unseen  host. 

The  question  he  had  asked  marked  him :  for 
he  was  one  of  the  children  who  from  the  outset 
begin  to  ask  of  life  what  it  means  and  who  are 
surprised  when  there  is  no  one  to  tell  them. 
For  him  there  was  no  rest  until  he  solved  some 
mystery  or  had  at  least  found  out  where  some 
mystery  stood  abandoned  on  the  road  —  a 
mystery  still.  Her  intelligence  stopped  short 
at  what  she  perfectly  knew.  She  saw  with 
amazing  clearness,  but  she  beheld  very  little. 
Hers  was  that  order  of  intelligence  which  is 
gifted  with  vision  of  almost  terrifying  accuracy 
—  at  short  range :  life  is  a  thin  painted  curtain, 
and  its  depths  are  the  painted  curtain's  depths. 

Once  they  came  to  a  pair  of  bars  which  led 
into  a  meadow.  The  bars  were  of  green  timber 
and  were  very  heavy.  As  he  strained  and 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  23 

tugged  at  them,  she  waited  close  behind  him, 
dancing  to  the  right  and  to  the  left  so  that  there 
was  a  sound  of  mud-crystals  being  crushed  under 
her  tyrannical  little  fat  feet. 

" Hurry,  hurry,  hurry!"  she  exclaimed  with 
impatience.  "We  may  run  in  the  cold,  but  we 
must  not  stand  still  in  the  cold ;"  and  she  kicked 
him  on  the  heels  and  pummelled  him  between 
the  shoulders  with  her  muff. 

"I  am  doing  my  best/'  he  said,  laughing 
heartily. 

"Your  best  is  not  good  enough,"  she  urged, 
laughing  heartily  likewise. 

"This  bar  is  wedged  tight.  It's  the  sap  that's 
frozen  to  the  post.  Look  out  there  behind!" 

He  stepped  back,  and,  with  a  short  run,  lifted 
his  leg  and  kicked  the  bar  with  his  full  strength. 
The  recoil  threw  him  backward  to  the  ground, 
but  he  was  quickly  on  his  feet  again ;  and  as  the 
bar  was  now  loosened,  he  let  it  down  for  her. 
She  stepped  serenely  through  and  without  look 
ing  back  or  waiting  trotted  on.  He  put  the 
bars  up  and  with  a  spurt  soon  overtook  her,  for 
the  meadow  they  were  now  crossing  had  been 
closely  grazed  in  the  autumn  and  there  was 
better  walking.  They  went  up  rising  ground 
and  reached  one  of  those  dome-like  elevations 
which  are  a  feature  of  the  blue-grass  country. 


24  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Straight  ahead  of  them  half  a  mile  away  stood 
the  house  toward  which  they  were  hastening ; 
a  two-story  brick  house,  lifted  a  little  above  its 
surroundings  of  yard  and  gardens  and  shrub 
bery  and  vines  :  an  oak-tree  over  its  roof,  cedar- 
trees  near  its  windows,  ivy  covering  one  of  its 
walls,  a  lawn  sloping  from  it  to  a  thicket  of 
evergreens  where  its  Christmas  Tree  each  year 
was  cut. 

The  children  greeted  with  fresh  enthusiasm 
the  sight  of  this  charming,  this  ideal  place  to 
which  they  were  transferring  their  Christmas 
plans  and  pleasures  —  abandoning  their  own 
hearthstone.  There  lived  their  father's  friend ; 
there  lived  Harold  and  Elizabeth,  their  friends ; 
and  there  lived  the  wife  and  mother  of  the 
household  —  the  woman  toward  whom  from 
their  infancy  they  had  been  herded  as  by  a 
driving  hand. 

The  tell-tale  Christmas  smoke  of  the  land 
was  pouring  from  its  chimneys,  showing  that 
it  was  being  warmed  through  and  through  for 
coming  guests  and  coming  festivities.  At  one 
end  of  the  building,  in  an  ell,  was  the  kitchen  ; 
it  sent  forth  a  volume  of  smoke,  the  hospitable 
invitations  of  which  there  was  no  misunder 
standing.  At  the  opposite  end  was  the  par 
lor  :  it  stood  for  the  Spirit,  as  the  kitchen  for 


THE  CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  25 

the  honest  Flesh :  the  wee  travellers  on  the 
distant  hilltop  thought  of  the  flesh  first. 

They  had  no  idea  of  the  origin  of  the  American 
Christmas.  They  did  not  know  that  this  vast 
rolling  festival  has  migrated  to  the  New  World, 
drawing  with  it  things  gathered  from  many 
lands  and  centuries ;  that  the  cooking  and  the 
feasting  crossed  from  pagan  England ;  that 
the  evergreen  with  its  lights  and  gifts  came 
from  pagan  Germany;  that  the  mystical  fire 
side  with  its  stockings  was  introduced  from 
Holland ;  that  the  evergreen  now  awaiting  them 
in  the  shut  and  darkened  parlor  of  this  Ken 
tucky  farm-house  represented  the  sacred  Tree 
which  has  been  found  in  nearly  every  ancient 
land  and  is  older  than  the  Tree  of  Life  in  the 
literature  of  Eden. 

As  far  as  they  thought  of  the  antiquity  of 
the  Christmas  festival  at  all,  it  had  descended 
straight  from  the  Holy  Land  and  the  Manger 
of  Bethlehem ;  this  error  now  led  to  compli 
cations. 

The  boy's  crimson  skull-cap  had  a  peak  which 
curled  forward ;  and  attached  to  this  peak  by 
several  inches  of  crewel  hung  a  round  crimson 
ball  about  the  size  of  the  seed-ball  of  a  syca 
more.  The  shifting  wind  blew  it  hither  and 
thither  so  that  it  buffeted  him  in  the  face  and 


26  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

eyes.  On  this  exposed  height,  especially,  the 
wind  raced  free;  and  he  ducked  his  head  and 
turned  his  face  sidewise  toward  her  —  an  imp 
of  winter  joy  —  as  he  shouted  across  the  gale  :  — 

"If  people  are  still  baking  such  quantities  of 
cake  in  memory  of  Christmas  after  all  these 
hundreds  of  years,  don't  you  suppose,  Elsie, 
that  the  Apostles  must  have  been  fearful  cake- 
eaters?  To  have  left  such  an  impression  on 
the  world!  Cake  is  a  kind  of  sacred  thing  at 
home  even  yet,  isn't  it?  A  fine  cake  looks 
still  as  if  it  was  baked  for  an  Apostle!  Doesn't 
it  ?  Now  doesn't  it  ?  " 

Elsie  did  not  reply  at  once.  Her  younger 
brother  was  growing  into  the  habit  of  saying 
unexpected  things.  Once  after  he  had  left  the 
breakfast  table,  she  had  heard  her  father  say 
to  her  mother  that  he  had  genius.  Elsie  was 
not  positive  as  to  all  that  genius  comprised; 
but  she  at  once  decided  that  if  she  did  not 
possess  genius  she  did  not  wish  genius.  How 
ever  she  packed  herself  off  to  her  room  and 
thought  further  about  this  unpleasant  parental 
discrimination. 

"If  he  has  genius/'  she  said  finally,  "at  least 
he  did  not  get  it  from  them"  and  there  was  a 
triumph  in  her  eye.  "I  see  not  the  slightest 
sign  of  genius  in  either  of  them:  he  must  have 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  27 

gotten  it  from  our  grandparents  —  never  from 
them!" 

From  that  moment  she  had  begun  to  oppose  her 
mind  to  his  mind  as  a  superior  working  instru 
ment  in  a  practical  world.  Whenever  he  put 
forth  a  fancy,  she  put  forth  a  fact ;  and  the  fact 
was  meant  to  extinguish  the  fancy  as  a  muffler 
puts  out  a  candle.  After  a  moment  she  now  re 
plied  —  with  a  mind  that  had  repudiated  genius : — 

"Nothing  is  said  in  the  New  Testament,  my 
child,  about  cake.  The  only  thing  mentioned 
is  loaves  and  fishes.  But  they  do  seem  to  have 
done  an  unconscionable  amount  of  dining  on 
bread  and  fish!"  and  Elsie  had  her  own  satirical 
laugh  at  the  table  customs  of  ancient  Palestine 
as  viewed  from  the  Kentucky  standard  of  the 
nineteenth  century. 

The  boy  before  replying  deliberated  as  always. 

"They  may  not  have  had  cake,  but  they  had 
meat :  because  they  said  he  sat  with  sinners  at 
meat.  I  wonder  why  it  was  always  the  sin 
ners  who  got  the  meat  /" 

Elsie  could  offer  no  personal  objection  to  this : 
Providence  had  ordained  her  to  dwell  in  the  tents 
of  flesh  herself. 

"How  could  they  feed  five  thousand  people 
on  five  loaves  and  two  fishes?  How  could  they? 
At  one  of  those  fish  dinners!" 


28  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"They  did  it!"  said  Elsie  flatly.  She  saw 
the  whole  transaction  with  brilliant  clearness 
—  saw  to  the  depths  of  the  painted  curtain. 
It  was  as  naturally  fact  as  the  family  four  of 
them  at  breakfast  that  morning,  fed  on  home- 
smoked  sausages  and  perfectly  digestible  buck 
wheat  cakes. 

"And  twelve  baskets  of  crumbs !  That 
makes  it  worse !  With  bread  for  thousands 
everywhere,  why  pick  up  crumbs?" 

"Nothing  is  said  about  crumbs;  they  were 
fragments." 

"But  if  I've  got  to  believe  it,  I've  got  to  think 
how  they  did  it !  I've  got  to  !  If  I  can't  think 
of  it  as  it  is,  I  must  think  of  it  as  it  isn't !  But 
I  can't  do  anything  with  the  loaves ;  I  give  up 
the  bread.  However,  I  think  those  two  fish 
might  have  been  leviathans.  That  would  be 
only  two  thousand  five  hundred  people  to  each 
leviathan.  Many  of  them  might  not  have 
liked  leviathan.  I  wouldn't  have  wanted  any ! 
They  could  have  skipped  me  !  They  could  have 
had  my  slice!  And  the  babies  —  they  didn't 
want  much!  Anyhow,  that's  the  best  I  can  do 
for  the  fish"  ;  and  he  had  his  laugh  also  —  not 
an  incessant  ripple  like  hers,  but  a  music  issuing 
from  the  depths  of  him  through  joy  in  the 
things  he  saw. 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  29 

Elsie  made  the  reply  which  of  late  was  be 
coming  habitual  in  her  talks  with  him. 

"  Don't  begin  to  be  peculiar,  Herbert.  You 
are  too  young  to  be  peculiar.  Leave  that  to 
old  people!"  and  Elsie's  mind  glided  off  from 
the  loaves  and  the  fishes  of  Galilee  to  certain 
old  people  of  her  neighborhood  from  whose  ec 
centricities  she  extracted  acrid  amusement. 

The  boy's  words  were  not  irreverent ;  irrev 
erence  had  never  been  taught  him ;  he  did  not 
know  what  irreverence  was.  They  merely  ex 
pressed  the  primary  action  of  his  mind  in  deal 
ing  with  what  to  him  was  a  wonder-story  of  Na 
ture.  And  yet  with  this  same  mind  which  asked 
of  wonder  that  it  be  reasonable,  he  was  on  his 
way  to  the  celebration  of  Christmas  Eve  and  to 
the  story  of  the  Nativity — the  most  joyous, 
the  most  sad,  the  most  sublime  Nature-story  of 
mankind. 

His  unconscious  requirement  was  that  this 
also  must  be  reasonable ;  if  it  were  not,  he  would 
accept  the  portions  that  were  reasonable  and 
reject  the  others  as  now  too  childish  for  his  fore 
handed  American  brain. 

They  were  nearing  the  end  of  their  bitter 
walk.  The  little  girl  as  she  hurried  forward 
now  and  then  strained  her  eyes  toward  the 
opposite  ends  of  the  house  ahead ;  at  the  kitchen 


30  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

smoke  which  promised  such  gifts  to  the  flesh; 
at  the  window-shutters  of  the  darkened  parlor 
where  the  Christmas  Tree  stood,  soon  to  be 
decorated  with  presents :  some  for  her  —  the 
little  fat  mercenary  now  approaching  who  was 
positive  that  during  these  days  of  prepara 
tion  she  had  struck  a  shrewd  bargain  with 
the  Immortal. 

The  boy,  too,  looked  at  these  windows ;  but 
especially  he  looked  at  another  between  them, 
from  which  perhaps  Elizabeth  was  watching  for 
him. 

Once  he  turned,  and,  walking  backward, 
directed  his  gaze  from  this  high  point  far  across 
the  country.  Somewhere  back  there  his  father 
might  now  be  stopping  at  a  farm-house.  A 
malignant  disease  was  raging  among  the  children 
of  the  neighborhood,  some  of  whom  were  his 
schoolmates  and  friends;  the  holidays  would 
bring  no  merry  Christmas  for  them. 

Wherever  his  father  might  be,  there  an  influ 
ence  started  and  came  rushing  across  the  land 
scape  like  the  shadow  of  a  cloud.  It  fell  upon 
him,  and  travelled  on  toward  the  house  he  was 
approaching;  it  disappeared  within  the  house 
and  fell  upon  the  woman  who  so  wonderfully 
moved  about  in  it :  a  chilling  mysterious  shadow 
that  bound  the  three  of  them  —  his  father  and 


THE   CHILDREN  OF  DESIRE  31 

himself  and  this  gentle  woman  —  together  in  a 
band  of  darkness. 

Then  he  faced  about  and  ran  on,  longing  the 
more  ardently  for  Elizabeth  :  the  path  between 
him  and  Elizabeth  lay  before  his  nimble  feet 
like  a  band  of  light. 


II 

WHEN    A    BOY    FINDS    OUT    ABOUT    HIS    FATHER 

ON  the  day  preceding  that  twenty-fourth  of 
December  when  his  two  weather-proof  untram 
melled  children  were  rioting  over  the  frozen  earth, 
Dr.  Birney  met  with  an  event  which  may  here  be 
set  down  as  casting  the  first  direct  light  upon 
him.  Some  reflected  radiance  may  already 
have  gone  glancing  in  his  direction  from  the 
luminous  prattle  of  his  offspring ;  some  obscure 
glimpses  must  therein  have  bodied  him  forth : 
and  the  portraits  that  children  unconsciously 
paint  of  people  —  what  trained  hand  ever  drew 
such  living  lines  ? 

A  short  stretch  across  the  country  from  his 
comfortable  manor  house  there  towered  in 
stateliness  one  of  the  finest  homesteads  of  this 
region ;  and  in  the  great  bedroom  of  this  house, 
in  the  mother's  bed,  there  had  lain  for  days 
one  of  his  patients  critically  ill,  the  only  child 
of  an  intense  mother  who  was  herself  no  longer 
young. 

Early  that  morning  upon  setting  out  he  had 
driven  rapidly  to  this  house,  gotten  quickly  out, 

32 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    33 

and  been  quickly  received  through  the  front 
door  thrown  open  to  admit  him.  After  examin 
ing  the  child,  he  had  turned  to  the  mother  and 
spoken  the  words  that  are  probably  the  happiest 
ever  to  fall  from  any  tongue  upon  any  ear :  — 
"He  is  out  of  danger.  He  is  getting  well." 
At  this  intelligence  the  mother  forgot  the 
presence  of  another  mother  older  than  herself 
who  had  come  to  be  with  her  during  these  vigils 
and  anxieties.  As  the  doctor,  having  spoken 
a  few  words  to  the  nurse,  passed  out  into  the 
hall  toward  the  hat-rack,  she  led  him  into  the 
parlors ;  she  pulled  him  down  into  a  chair  beside 
the  one  she  took;  she  caught  his  hand  in  hers 
and  drew  it  into  her  lap.  She  forgot  that  after 
all  she  was  a  woman  and  he  was  a  man;  she 
remembered  only  that  she  was  a  mother  and  he 
a  physician ;  and  unnerved  by  the  relief  from 
days  and  nights  of  tension,  she  poured  out  her 
quivering  gratitude. 

The  doctor  with  a  warm  light  in  his  eyes 
listened ;  and  he  was  flushed  with  pleasure  also 
at  his  skill  in  bringing  his  case  through;  but 
she  had  scarcely  begun  before  his  expression 
showed  embarrassment.  Gratitude  rendered 
him  ill  at  ease :  who  can  thank  Science  ?  Who 
can  thank  a  man  for  doing  his  duty  and  his  best  ? 
With  a  smile  of  deprecation  he  interrupted  :  — 


34  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"A  great  surgeon  of  France  centuries  ago 
was  accustomed  to  say  of  a  convalescent  pa 
tient :  ' God  cured  him;  I  dressed  him.'  I  do 
not  know  whether,  if  I  dared  speak  for  the  science 
of  medicine  near  the  close  of  the  nineteenth  cen 
tury,  I  could  say  that.  That  is  not  the  language 
of  science  now.  If  science  thanks  anything,  it 
thanks  other  sciences  and  respects  itself.  But 
I  will  say  that  I  might  not  have  been  able  to 
save  the  life  of  your  son  if  he  had  not  been  a 
healthy  child — and  a  happy  one ;  for  happiness 
in  a  child  is  of  course  one  of  its  signs  of  health. 
In  his  case  I  did  not  have  to  treat  a  patient  with 
a  disease ;  I  had  merely  to  treat  a  disease  in  a 
patient :  and  there  is  a  great  difference.  The 
patient  kept  out  of  the  case  altogether,  or  in  so 
far  as  he  entered  it,  he  entered  it  as  my  assist 
ant.  But  if  he  had  not  been  healthy  and 
happy,  the  result  might  have  been  —  well, 
different." 

The  mother's  face  became  more  radiant. 

"If  his  health  and  happiness  helped  him 
through,"  she  exclaimed,  "then  his  mother 
enters  into  the  case;  for  his  health  was  his 
birthright  from  his  parents ;  and  his  happiness 
—  on  account  of  the  absence  of  his  father  during 
most  of  his  life  when  he  has  been  awake  —  has 
been  a  gift  from  his  mother.  He  has  lived  with 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    35 

Happiness;  Happiness  has  been  before  his 
eyes ;  Happiness  has  filled  his  ears ;  Happiness 
has  held  him  in  its  arms ;  Happiness  has  danced 
for  his  feet ;  Happiness  has  rocked  him  to  sleep ; 
Happiness  has  smiled  over  him  when  he  awoke. 
He  has  not  known  anything  but  Happiness 
because  Happiness  has  been  his  mother.  And 
so,  if  he  owes  the  preservation  of  his  life  to  Hap 
piness,  he  owes  it  to  the  instinct  of  maternal 
imitation." 

The  doctor  had  heard  this  carolling  of  mater 
nity  with  full  approval  —  this  heaven-rising 
skylark  song  of  motherhood;  but  at  the  last 
sentence  he  pricked  up  his  ears  with  disfavor 
and  stopped  smiling :  with  him  these  were 
marks  that  he  had  withdrawn  his  intellectual 
fellowship.  The  trouble  was  that  he  esteemed 
her  a  charming  and  irreproachable  woman  and 
wife  and  mother ;  but  that  he  could  accord  her 
no  rank  as  a  scientist,  no  standing  whatsoever ; 
and  therefore  he  must  part  company  with  her 
when  she  spoke  for  instincts.  The  instinct  of 
maternal  imitation  —  the  vanity  of  it !  That 
her  sex  could  believe  a  child  to  be  sent  into  this 
world  by  the  great  Mother  of  all  wisdom  and 
given  so  poor  a  start  as  to  be  placed  under  the 
tyranny  of  an  instinct  to  imitate  any  other 
imperfect  human  being  —  man  or  woman. 


36  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Perhaps  it  was  one  of  his  weaknesses,  when 
he  came  upon  a  case  of  folly,  to  wish  to  perform 
an  operation  in  mental  surgery  at  once  —  and 
without  anaesthetics,  in  order  that  the  wide 
awake  intelligence  of  the  sufferer  might  be  en 
listed  against  the  recurrence  of  such  a  necessity. 

In  a  tone  of  affectionate  forbearance  he  now 
said :  — 

"If  only  there  were  any  such  thing  in  Nature 
as  the  instinct  of  maternal  imitation  !  Children 
have  enough  instincts  to  battle  with  and  fight 
their  way  through,  as  it  is.  Let  me  beg  of  you 
not  to  teach  your  child  anything  as  criminally 
wrong  as  that ;  and  don't  you  be  so  criminally 
wrong  as  to  believe  it !" 

The  mother's  countenance  fell.  She  released 
the  doctor's  hand  and  pushed  her  chair  back; 
and  she  brushed  out  her  lap  with  both  hands  as 
though  his  words  might  somehow  have  fallen 
into  it,  and  she  did  not  wish  them  to  remain 
there.  She  spoke  caustically :  — 

"No  intimate  sacred  bond  between  mother 
and  child  which  guides  it  to  imitate  her  ?" 

She  felt  as  though  he  had  attacked  the  very 
citadel  of  motherhood ;  as  though  he  had  over 
thrown  the  tested  and  adopted  standards  of 
universal  thinking,  the  very  basic  idea  of  exist 
ence  ;  and  she  recoiled  from  this  as  a  taint  of 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    37 

eccentricity  in  him  —  that  early  death-knell 
of  a  physician's  usefulness. 

But  the  doctor  swept  her  words  away  with 
gay  warmth :  — 

"Oh,  there  is  the  intimate  sacred  bond,  of 
course  !  No  doubt  the  most  ultimate,  the  most 
sacred  in  this  world.  Believe  in  that  all  you 
can :  the  more  the  better !  But  we  are  not 
speaking  of  that :  that  has  nothing  to  do  with 
this  imagined  instinct  of  maternal  imitation. 
Don't  you  know  that  a  foundling  in  a  foundling 
asylum  as  instinctively  imitates  its  nurse? 
Don't  you  know  that  a  child  as  instinctively 
imitates  its  stepmother  —  if  it  loves  her  ? 
Don't  you  know  that  a  child  as  instinctively 
imitates  its  grandmother?" 

The  mother  lay  back  hi  her  chair  and  looked 
at  him  without  a  word.  But  then,  Doctor 
Birney  could  be  rude,  curt,  brutal.  In  proof 
of  which  he  now  leaned  over  toward  her  and 
continued  with  more  gentleness  :  — 

"Do  you  not  know  that  every  child  in  this 
world  begins  its  advance  into  life  by  one  path 
only  —  the  path  of  least  resistance  ?  and  its 
path  of  least  resistance  is  paved  and  lined  with 
what  it  likes !  As  soon  as  it  can  do  anything 
for  itself,  it  tries  to  do  what  it  likes,  and  it  never 
tries  to  do  anything  else.  When,  later  on,  a 


38  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

time  comes  when  it  can  be  persuaded  to  do  a 
thing  that  it  has  already  desired  not  to  do,  then 
its  will  comes  into  the  case ;  it  ceases  to  be 
simply  a  little  animal  and  becomes  a  little 
human  animal;  it  begins  to  be  moral  and 
heroic  instead  of  unmoral  and  unheroic.  But 
we  are  not  talking  about  that.  The  best  we 
can  do  is  to  call  those  earliest  movements  of 
its  life  the  reaching  out  of  its  instincts  and  its 
taking  hold  of  things  that  are  like  its  own 
leading  traits.  The  parallel  is  in  Nature  where 
the  tendril  of  a  vine  takes  hold  of  the  matured 
branch  of  the  same  vine  and  pulls  itself  up  by 
this.  Thus  one  generation  knits  itself  to 
another  through  the  binding  of  like  to  like; 
and  that  is  the  whole  bond  between  mother  and 
child  or  father  and  child :  it  is  like  attaching 
itself  to  like  under  the  influence  of  love.  In 
this  world  every  subject  has  two  doors :  you 
open  one,  and  the  good  things  come  out.  You 
open  the  other,  and  the  evil  things  come  out. 
This  subject  has  its  two  doors :  and  I  open 
first  the  door  of  Mother  of  Pearl  —  for  you 
two  pearls  of  mothers !  Out  of  it  come  all  the 
exquisite  radiant  traits  that  bind  mothers  and 
children.  How  many  great  men  in  history 
have  begun  their  growth  by  attaching  them 
selves  to  the  great  traits  of  their  mothers? 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    39 

Then  there  is  the  other  door.  I  am  sorry  to 
open  it,  but  whether  I  open  it  or  not,  opened 
it  will  be :  the  Door  of  Ebony  behind  which 
are  imprisoned  all  the  dark  things  that  bind 
parents  and  children.  I  am  afraid  I  shall  have 
to  illustrate :  if  a  child  is  born  mendacious  and 
its  mother  has  mendacity  as  one  of  her  leading 
traits,  its  little  mendacity  will  flourish  on  her 
large  mendacity.  If  it  is  born  deceitful,  and 
hypocrisy  is  one  of  her  traits,  hypocrisy  hi  it 
will  pull  itself  up  by  taking  hold  of  hypocrisy 
in  her.  If  it  is  born  quick-tempered,  and  if 
ungovernable  temper  is  one  of  her  failings, 
every  exhibition  of  this  in  her  will  foster  its 
impatience  and  lack  of  self-control.  These 
are  some  few  of  the  dreadful  things  that  come 
out :  and  if  it  is  dreadful  even  to  speak  of  them, 
think  how  much  more  dreadful  to  see  them  alive 
and  to  set  them  at  work !  Now  let's  shut  the  dark 
Door  !  And  let  us  hope  that  some  day  Nature 
herself  may  not  be  able  to  open  it  ever  again !" 
Hitherto  the  older  of  the  two  mothers,  the 
mother  of  many  children,  had  remained  silent 
with  that  peculiar  expression  of  patience  and 
sweetness  which  lies  like  a  halo  on  the  faces  of 
good  women  who  have  brought  many  children 
into  the  world.  She  now  spoke  as  if  to  release 
many  thoughts  weighing  heavily  upon  her. 


40  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"It  has  always  been  my  trouble  —  not  that 
my  children  would  not  imitate  me,  but  that 
they  would  imitate  me  !  I  have  my  faults,  for 
I  am  human ;  and  I  can  endure  them  as  long 
as  they  remain  mine.  They  have  ceased  to  give 
me  much  concern.  I  suppose  in  a  way  I  have 
grown  attached  to  them,  just  as  I  like  people 
whom  I  do  not  entirely  approve.  But  as  soon 
as  I  see  the  children  reproducing  my  faults,  these 
become  responsibilities.  They  keep  me  awake 
at  night ;  sometimes  they  distress  me  almost 
beyond  endurance.  I  know  I  have  spent  many 
anxious  years  with  this  problem.  And  I  know 
also  that  the  only  times  when  their  father  has 
been  overanxious  about  his  failings  has  been 
when  the  boys  have  imitated  him.  He  is  always 
ready  to  lead  a  splendid  attack  on  his  faults, 
and  they  march  at  him  from  the  direction  of 
the  boys!" 

"And  so,"  said  the  doctor,  laughing,  "this 
instinct  of  parental  imitation  is  an  instrument 
safe  to  take  by  the  handle,  and  dangerous  to 
grasp  by  the  blade  !" 

He  knew  fathers  in  the  neighborhood  who 
were  dreading  the  time  when  their  sons  might 
begin  to  imitate  them  —  too  far.  And  other 
fathers  dreading  the  hour  when  their  sons 
might  cease  to  imitate  their  sires,  and  wander 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    41 

away  preferably  to  imitate  persons  outside  the 
family  connection,  —  possibly  an  instinct  of 
non-parental  imitation ! 

He  rose  to  go  in  a  mood  of  great  good  nature, 
and  looked  from  one  to  the  other  of  the  two 
mothers :  — 

"  Perhaps  Nature  protected  children  from  the 
danger  of  imitating  by  not  making  it  their 
duty  to  imitate.  And  perhaps,  as  all  parents 
are  imperfect  human  beings,  she  may  have 
thought  it  simple  justice  to  children  to  confer 
upon  them  the  right  to  be  disobedient.  At 
least,  if  there  is  an  instinct  to  obey,  it  is  backed 
up  with  an  equal  instinct  not  to  obey ;  and  the 
two  seem  to  have  been  left  to  fight  it  out 
between  themselves;  and  that  perhaps  is  the 
great  battle-field  where  incessant  fighting  goes 
on  between  parents  and  children.  And  at  least 
disobedience  has  been  of  equal  value  with  obe 
dience  hi  the  making  of  human  history,  in  the 
development  of  the  race.  For  if  children  had 
simply  obeyed  their  parents,  if  the  young  had 
.been  born  merely  to  ape  the  old,  there  never 
would  have  been  any  human  young  and  old. 
We  should  all  still  be  apes,  even  if  we  had 
developed  as  far  as  that.  You  two  ladies  — 
of  course  with  greatly  modified  features  — 
might  be  throwing  cocoanuts  at  each  other  on 


42  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  tops  of  two  rival  palm-trees.  Or  —  as  the  du 
tiful  daughters  of  dutiful  mothers  —  you  might  be 
taking  afternoon  naps  in  an  oasis  of  dates  —  all 
because  of  that  instinct  of  maternal  imitation  !  " 

He  hurried  out  to  the  hat-rack,  making  his 
retreat  at  the  top  of  his  own  high  spirits,  they 
following ;  and  with  one  glove  on  he  held  out  his 
hand  to  the  mother  of  the  sick  boy :  — 

"  111  come  in  the  morning  to  see  how  he  is — and 
to  see  how  his  mother  is.  Now  shake  hands  and 
say  I  have  been  a  good  doctor  to  you  both." 

The  mother's  reply  showed  that  bitterness 
rankled  in  her,  as  she  yielded  her  hand  coldly :  — 

"Even  if  you  have  tried  to  destroy  for  me  the 
intimate  sacred  bond  between  a  mother  and  her 
child,  I  don't  think  you  will  be  able  to  deny  that  my 
boy  is  a  healthy  and  happy  child  because  he  is  a 
child  of  a  perfect  marriage  ! "  And  she  looked 
with  secret  and  shaded  import  at  the  other  mother. 

As  the  doctor  drove  out  of  the  yard  her  last 
words  lingered  —  the  healthy  children  of  a  per 
fect  marriage.  And  the  look  the  two  mothers 
had  exchanged !  It  was  as  though  each  had  a 
sword  in  her  eye  and  touched  him  with  the 
point  of  it  —  hinting  that  he  merited  being  run 
through.  How  often  during  these  years  he  had 
encountered  that  same  look  from  other  mothers 
of  the  neighborhood! 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    43 

"But  if  a  wound  like  that  could  have  been 
fatal,"  he  reflected,  "if  a  wound  like  that  could 
have  finished  me,  I  should  not  have  been  here 
to  save  the  life  of  her  boy  ;  he  would  have  been 
dead  this  morning." 

Then  his  mind  under  the  rigor  of  long  train 
ing  passed  to  happier  subjects.  His  success  in  the 
case  of  this  child  was  one  more  triumph  in  his  long 
list;  it  renewed  his  grip  on  power  within  him. 

But  for  the  necessity  to  provide  for  a  people 
the  services  of  general  practitioner,  Dr.  Birney 
would  have  made  a  specialty  of  children's 
diseases.  The  happiest  moment  he  experienced 
in  his  profession  was  a  day  such  as  this  when 
he  could  announce  the  triumph  of  his  skill  and 
the  saving  of  a  young  life.  There  was  no 
sadder  one  than  any  day  on  which  he  walked 
out  of  the  sick  chamber  and  at  the  threshold 
met  the  gaunt  ancient  Presence,  waiting  to 
stalk  in  and  take  the  final  charge  of  the  case 
given  up  by  the  vanquished  physician.  And 
when  a  few  days  later  he  sat  in  his  buggy  on 
the  turnpike  at  the  end  of  a  procession  —  his 
healthy  little  patient  stretched  prostrate  at 
the  other  end  —  he  driving  there  as  the  public 
representative  of  a  science  that  was  ages  old 
and  that  had  gathered  from  all  lands  the  wisdom 


44  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

of  the  best  minds  but  was  still  impotent  —  on 
such  a  day  he  went  down  to  his  lowest  defeat. 

He  had  such  faith  in  the  future  of  his  science 
that  he  looked  forward  to  the  time  when  there 
would  be  no  such  monstrous  tragedy  on  this 
planet  as  infant  mortality.  No  healthy  child 
would  ever  be  allowed  to  die  of  disease ;  disease 
would  never  be  permitted  to  reach  it,  or  reach 
ing  it,  would  be  arrested  as  it  arrived.  The 
vast  multitude  of  physicians  and  surgeons  now 
camped  around  the  morning  of  life,  waiting 
to  receive  the  incoming  generations  on  the  rosy 
mountain-tops  of  its  dawn  —  nearly  all  these 
would  be  withdrawn ;  they  would  move  across 
the  landscape  of  the  world  and  pitch  then-  tents 
on  the  plains  of  waning  daylight;  there  to 
receive  the  ragged  and  broken  army  that  came 
staggering  from  the  battle-field,  every  soldier 
more  or  less  wounded,  every  soldier  more  or  less 
weary;  there  to  give  them  a  twilight  of  least 
suffering,  their  sundown  of  peace ;  and  there 
to  arrange  that  the  great  dark  Gates  closed  on 
them  softly. 

The  conversation  that  morning  disclosed 
among  other  facts  the  secret  dread  of  Dr. 
Birney's  life :  that  the  time  would  come  when 
his  children,  especially  his  boy,  might  begin  to 
imitate  him  more  than  he  desired.  For  a  long 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    45 

time  now  he  had  kept  under  closest  observation 
the  working  out  in  each  of  them  of  the  law 
of  like  attaching  itself  to  like ;  for  already  this 
had  borne  fruit  for  both  on  the  vine  of  his  own 
profession. 

A  physician  in  a  city  may  practise  his  profes 
sion  with  complete  segregation  from  the  mem 
bers  of  his  family ;  his  office  may  be  miles  away  ; 
if  he  sees  his  patients  in  his  house,  his  children 
are  kept  in  another  part  of  it.  But  out  in  the 
country  the  whole  house  is  open ;  the  children 
rove  everywhere ;  if  their  father  is  a  physician, 
they  know  when  he  starts  and  when  he  returns ; 
and  there  is  displayed  in  full  view  the  entire 
drama  of  his  life.  And  this  life  is  twofold : 
for  the  physician  must  demonstrate  as  no 
member  of  any  other  profession  is  required  to 
do  —  that  whoever  would  best  serve  mankind 
must  first  best  serve  himself.  In  this  service 
he  must  reach  a  solution  of  the  selfish  and  the 
unselfish ;  he  must  reconcile  the  world's  two 
warring  philosophies  of  egoism  and  altruism. 
The  outside  world  has  its  attention  fixed  solely 
upon  the  drama  of  the  physician's  public  ser 
vice  to  it ;  for  the  members  of  his  own  family 
is  reserved  acquaintance  with  the  drama  of  his 
devotion  to  himself.  Well  for  him  and  well  for 
them  if  they  do  not  misunderstand  ! 


46  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Each  of  Dr.  Birney's  children  responded  to 
the  attraction  of  a  phase  of  his  life  —  the  phase 
that  appealed  to  a  leading  trait  in  each. 

From  the  time  of  the  little  girl's  beginning 
to  observe  her  father  she  was  influenced  by  what 
looked  to  her  like  his  self-love :  his  care  about 
what  he  ate  and  drank;  his  changing  of  his 
clothes  whenever  he  came  home,  whether  they 
were  drenched  or  were  dry ;  his  constant  wash 
ing  of  his  hands;  all  this  pageant  of  self -ad 
ulation  mirrored  itself  in  her  consciousness. 
When  he  was  away  from  home,  she  could  still 
follow  him  by  her  mother's  solicitude  for  his 
comfort  and  safety.  To  Elsie's  mother  the  ill 
were  not  so  much  a  source  of  anxiety  as  a  hus 
band  who  was  perfectly  well;  and  thus  there 
had  been  built  up  in  Elsie  herself  the  domineer 
ing  idea  that  her  father  was  the  all-important 
personage  in  the  neighborhood  as  a  consequence 
of  thinking  chiefly  of  himself.  Selfishness  in 
her  reached  out  and  twined  itself  like  a  tendril 
about  selfishness  in  him ;  and  she  proceeded  to 
lift  herself  up  and  grow  by  this  vital  bond. 

Too  young  to  transmit  this  resemblance,  she 
did  what  she  could  to  pass  it  on  to  the  next 
generation :  she  handed  it  down  and  dissemi 
nated  it  in  her  doll-house.  There  was  some 
thing  terrifying  and  grim  and  awful  in  the 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    47 

fatalistic  accuracy  with  which  Elsie  reproduced 
her  father's  selfishness  among  her  dolls,  because 
it  was  on  a  mimic  scale  what  is  going  on  all  over 
the  world :  the  weaving  by  children's  fingers 
of  parental  designs  long  perpetuated  in  the 
tapestry  of  Nature;  the  same  old  looms,  the 
same  old  threads,  the  same  old  designs  —  but 
new  fingers. 

One  of  the  dolls  was  known  as  "the  doctor" ; 
the  others  were  the  members  of  his  family  and 
his  domestics.  This  puppet  was  a  perfect 
child-image  of  the  god  of  self-idolatry,  as  set 
up  hi  the  person  of  a  certain  Dr.  Downs 
Birney,  and  as  observed  by  his  very  loyal  and 
most  affectionate  and  highly  amused  daughter 
Elsie. 

One  day  the  doctor,  quietly  passing  the  opened 
door  of  the  nursery,  saw  Elsie  on  the  floor  with 
her  back  turned  to  him  faithfully  copying  and 
dramatizing  some  of  the  daily  scenes  of  his 
professional  life.  His  eyes  shone  with  humor 
as  he  looked  on ;  but  there  was  sadness  in  them 
as  he  turned  silently  away. 

With  the  boy  it  was  otherwise.  The  earliest 
notion  of  his  father  the  boy  had  grasped  was 
that  of  always  travelling  toward  the  sick  — 
to  a  world  that  needed  him.  All  the  roads  of 
the  neighborhood  —  turnpikes,  lanes,  carriage- 


48  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

tracks,  wagon-tracks,  foot-paths  —  met  at  his 
father's  house ;  if  you  followed  any  one  of  them 
long  enough,  sooner  or  later  you  would  reach 
some  one  who  was  sick. 

When  he  was  quite  young  his  father  began 
to  take  him  in  his  buggy  on  his  circuits  ;  and  at 
every  house  where  they  stopped,  he  witnessed 
this  never-ending  drama  of  need  and  aid.  Such 
countenances  people  had  as  they  followed  his 
father  out  to  the  buggy  where  he  was  holding 
the  reins  !  Such  happy  faces  —  or  so  sad,  so 
sad !  Souls  hanging  on  his  father's  word  as 
though  life  went  on  with  it  or  went  to  pieces 
with  it.  Actually  his  father  had  no  business 
of  his  own :  he  merely  drove  about  and  enabled 
other  people  to  attend  to  their  business  !  He 
one  day  asked  him  why  he  did  not  sometimes 
do  something  for  himself  and  the  family  ! 

Thus  a  leading  trait  in  him  gripped  that 
branch  of  his  father's  life  where  hung  his  ser 
vice  to  others ;  and  by  this  vital  bond  it  lifted 
itself  up  and  began  to  flourish  in  its  long  travel 
toward  maturity.  He  literally  took  hold  of  his 
father,  as  a  social  implement,  by  the  well-worn 
handle  of  common  use. 

His  presence  in  the  buggy  with  his  father  was 
not  incidental ;  it  was  the  doctor's  design.  He 
wished  to  have  the  boy  along  during  these 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    49 

formative  years  in  order  that  he  might  get  the 
right  start  toward  the  great  things  of  life  as 
these  one  by  one  begin  to  break  in  upon  the 
attention  of  a  growing  boy.  The  doctor  wanted 
to  be  the  first  to  talk  with  him  —  the  first  to 
sow  the  right  suggestions :  it  was  one  of  his 
sayings  that  the  earliest  suggestions  rooted  in 
the  mind  of  the  child  will  be  the  final  things  to 
drop  from  the  dying  man's  brain :  what  goes  in 
first  comes  out  last. 

And  so  there  began  to  be  many  conversations ; 
incredible  questions ;  answers  not  always  f  orth- 
coming.  And  a  series  of  revelations  ensued ; 
the  boy  revealing  his  growth  to  a  watchful 
father,  and  a  father  revealing  his  Me  to  a  very 
watchful  son  !  These  revelations  began  to  look 
like  mile-stones  on  life's  road,  marked  with 
further  understandings. 

Thus,  one  day  when  the  boy  was  a  good  deal 
younger  than  now,  his  father  had  come  home 
and  had  gotten  ready  to  go  away  again  and 
was  sitting  before  the  fire,  looking  gravely  into 
it  and  taking  solitary  counsel  about  some  des 
perate  case,  as  the  country  doctor  must  often 
do.  Being  a  very  little  fellow  then,  he  had 
straddled  one  of  his  father's  mighty  legs  and 
had  balanced  himself  by  resting  his  hands  on 
his  father's  mighty  shoulders. 


50  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"Is  somebody  very  sick?" 

The  head  under  the  weather-roughened  hat 
nodded  silently. 

"I  wonder  how  it  happens  that  all  the  sick 
are  in  our  neighborhood." 

A  smile  flitted  across  the  doctor's  mouth. 

"The  sick  are  in  all  neighborhoods,  little 
wonderer." 

He  said  this  cheerfully.  It  was  his  idea  — 
and  he  tried  to  enforce  it  at  home  —  that  young 
children  must  never,  if  possible,  make  the  ac 
quaintance  of  the  words  bad  and  sad  —  nor  of 
the  realities  that  are  masked  behind  them.  He 
especially  believed  that  what  the  old  are  familiar 
with  as  life's  tragic  laws  ought  never  to  be  told 
to  children  as  tragic  :  what  is  inevitable  should 
never  be  presented  to  them  as  misfortunes. 

Therefore  he  now  declared  that  the  sick  are 
in  all  neighborhoods  as  he  might  have  stated 
that  there  are  wings  on  all  birds,  or  leaves  on  all 
growing  apple  trees. 

"Not  all  over  the  world?"  asked  the  boy, 
enlarging  his  vision  in  space. 

"All  over  the  world,"  admitted  the  doctor 
with  entire  cheerfulness  ;  the  fact  was  a  matter 
of  no  consequence. 

"Not  all  the  time?"  asked  the  boy,  enlarging 
his  outlook  in  time. 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    51 

"  All  the  time  !  All  over  the  world  and  all  the 
time  ! "  conceded  the  doctor,  as  though  this  made 
not  the  slightest  difference  to  a  human  being. 

"  Isn't  there  a  single  minute  when  everybody 
is  well  everywhere  ?" 

"Not  a  single,  solitary  minute." 

"Then  somebody  must  always  be  suffering." 

The  doctor  nodded  again ;  the  matter  was 
not  worth  speaking  of. 

"  Then  somebody  else  must  always  be  sorry." 

The  doctor  bowed  encouragingly. 

"Then  I  am  sorry,  too!" 

This  time  the  doctor  did  not  move  his  head, 
and  he  did  not  open  his  lips.  He  saw  that  a 
new  moment  had  arrived  in  the  boy's  growth  — 
a  consciousness  of  the  universal  tragedy  and 
personal  share  and  sorrow  in  it.  He  knew  that 
many  people  never  feel  this ;  some  feel  it  late ;  a 
few  feel  it  early ;  he  had  always  said  that  children 
should  never  feel  it.  He  knew  also  that  when 
once  it  has  begun,  it  never  ends.  Nothing  ever 
banishes  it  or  stills  it  —  that  perception  of  the 
'  human  tragedy  and  one's  share  and  sorrow  in  it. 

He  did  not  welcome  its  appearance  now,  in 
his  son  least  of  all.  For  an  instant  he  charged 
himself  with  having  made  a  mistake  in  taking 
the  child  along  on  his  visits  to  the  sick,  thus 
making  known  too  early  the  dark  side  of  happy 


52  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

neighborhood  life.  Then  he  went  further  back 
and  traced  this  premature  seriousness  to  its 
home  and  its  beginning  :  in  prenatal  depression 
—  in  a  mother's  anguish  and  a  wife's  despair. 
It  was  a  bitter  retrospect :  it  kept  him  brooding. 

The  chatter  was  persistent.  A  hand  was 
stretched  up,  and  it  took  hold  of  his  chin  and 
shook  it :  — 

"  There  ought  to  be  a  country  where  nobody 
suffers  and  there  ought  to  be  a  time ;  a  large 
country  and  a  long  time." 

"  There  is  such  a  country  and  there  is  such  a 
time,  Herbert,"  said  the  doctor,  now  with  some 
sadness. 

"Then  I'll  warrant  you  it's  part  of  the 
United  States,"  cried  the  boy,  getting  his  idea 
of  mortality  slightly  mixed  with  his  early  Amer 
icanism.  "  Texas  would  hold  them,  wouldn't 
it?  Don't  you  think  Texas  could  contain 
them  all  and  contain  them  forever?" 

The  doctor  laughed  and  seemed  to  think 
enough  had  been  said  on  the  subject  of  large 
enough  graveyards  for  the  race. 

"Why  don't  you  doctors  send  your  patients 
to  that  country?" 

"Perhaps  we  do  sometimes!"  The  doctor 
laughed  again. 

"Do  you  ever  send  yours?" 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    53 

''Possibly." 

"And  how  many  do  you  send?" 

"I  don't  know!"  exclaimed  the  doctor, 
laughing  this  time  without  being  wholly  amused. 
"I  don't  know,  and  I  never  intend  to  try  to  find 
out." 

"When  I  grow  up  we'll  practise  together  and 
send  twice  as  many,"  the  boy  said,  looking  into 
his  father's  eyes  with  the  flattery  of  professional 
imitation. 

"So  we  will!  There'll  be  no  trouble  about 
that !  Twice  as  many,  perhaps  three  times  ! 
No  trouble  whatever  !" 

He  took  the  hands  from  his  shoulders  and 
laid  them  in  the  palm  of  his  and  studied  them 
—  those  masculine  boyish  hands  that  had  never 
touched  any  of  the  world's  suffering.  And 
then  he  looked  at  his  own  hands  which  had 
handled  so  much  of  the  world's  suffering,  but 
had  never  reached  happiness ;  happiness  which 
for  years  had  dwelt  just  at  his  finger-tips  but 
beyond  arm's  reach. 

Not  very  long  afterwards  another  con 
versation  lettered  another  mile-stone  in  the 
progress  of  mutual  understanding. 

It  was  a  beautiful  drowsy  May  morning  near 
noon,  and  the  two  were  driving  slowly  home 
ward  along  the  turnpike.  When  the  lazily 


54  THE   DOCTOR'S   CHRISTMAS  EVE 

trotting  horse  reached  the  front  gate  of  a  cer 
tain  homestead,  he  stopped  and  threw  one  ear 
backward  as  a  living  interrogation  point.  As 
his  answer,  he  got  an  unexpected  cut  in  the 
flank  with  the  tip  of  the  lash  that  was  like  the 
sting  of  a  hornet :  a  reminder  that  the  driver 
was  not  alone  in  the  buggy;  that  the  horse 
should  have  known  he  was  not  alone ;  and  that 
what  he  did  when  alone  was  a  matter  of  con 
fidence  between  master  and  beast. 

The  boy,  who  had  been  thrown  backward, 
heels  high,  laughed  as  he  settled  himself  again 
on  his  cushion  :  — 

"He  thought  you  wanted  to  turn  in." 

"He  thinks  too  much  —  sometimes." 

"Don't  they  ever  get  sick  there?" 

"I  suppose  they  do." 

"TTienyouturnin!" 

"Then  I  don't  turn  in." 

"Aren't  you  their  doctor?" 

"I  was  the  doctor  once." 

"Where  was  I?" 

"I  don't  know  where  you  were;  you  were 
not  born." 

"So  many  things  happened  before  I  was 
born;  I  wish  they  hadn't !" 

"It  is  a  pity  ;  I  had  the  same  experience." 

The  buggy  rolled   slowly   along  homeward. 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    55 

On  one  side  of  the  road  were  fields  of  young 
Indian  corn,  the  swordlike  blades  flashing  in 
the  sun;  on  the  other  side  fields  of  red  clover 
blooming ;  the  fragrance  was  wafted  over  the 
fence  to  the  buggy.  Further,  in  a  soft  grassy 
lawn,  on  a  little  knoll  shaded  by  a  white 
ash,  a  group  of  sleek  cattle  stood  content 
in  their  blameless  world.  Over  the  prostrate 
cows  one  lordly  head,  its  incurved  horns  deep 
hidden  by  its  curls,  kept  guard.  The  scene 
was  a  living  Kentucky  replica  of  Paul  Potter's 
Bull. 

"Drive!"  murmured  the  doctor,  handing 
over  the  reins ;  and  he  drew  his  hat  low  over 
his  eyes  and  set  his  shoulder  against  his  corner 
of  the  buggy;  he  often  caught  up  with  sleep 
while  on  the  road.  And  he  often  tried  to  catch 
up  with  thinking. 

The  horse  always  knew  when  the  reins 
changed  hands.  He  disregarded  the  proxy, 
kept  his  own  gait,  picked  the  best  of  the  road, 
and  turned  out  for  passing  vehicles.  The  boy 
now  grasped  the  lines  with  unexpected  positive- 
ness  ;  and  he  leaned  over  and  looked  up  under 
the  rim  of  his  father's  hat :  — 

"I  hope  the  doctor  they  employ  will  give 
them  the  wrong  medicines,"  he  confided.  "I 
hope  the  last  one  of  them  will  have  many  a 


56  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

rattling  good  bellyache  for  their  meanness  to 
you!" 

Then  more  years  for  father  and  son,  each 
finding  the  other  out. 

And  now  finally  on  the  morning  of  that 
twenty-fourth  day  of  December,  the  father  was 
to  witness  a  scene  in  the  drama  of  his  life  as 
amazingly  performed  by  his  son  —  illustrating 
what  a  little  actor  can  do  when  he  undertakes  to 
imitate  an  old  actor  to  whom  he  is  most  loyal. 

That  morning  after  breakfast  the  apt  pupil 
in  Life's  School  had  been  sent  for,  and  when 
he  had  entered  the  library,  his  father  was 
sitting  before  the  fire,  idle.  The  buggy  was 
not  waiting  outside ;  the  hat  and  overcoat  and 
gloves  were  nowhere  in  sight ;  and  he  had  not 
gotten  ready  his  satchel  which  took  the  place 
of  the  saddlebags  of  earlier  generations  when 
the  country  doctor  travelled  around  on  horse 
back  and  carried  the  honey  of  physic  packed  at 
his  thighs  —  like  a  wingless,  befattened  bumble 
bee.  This  morning  it  looked  as  though  all  the 
sick  were  well  at  last ;  it  was  a  sound  if  wicked 
world;  and  nothing  was  left  for  a  physician 
but  to  be  happy  in  it  —  without  a  profession  — 
and  without  wickedness. 

He   threw  himself   into   his   father's   impul- 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    57 

sively  opened  arms,  and  was  heaved  high  into 
his  lap.  Though  he  was  growing  rather  mature 
for  laps  now;  he  was  beginning  to  speculate 
about  having  something  of  a  lap  of  his  own ; 
quite  a  good  deal  of  a  lap. 

"How  is  the  children's  epidemic  to-day?" 

"Never  you  mind  about  the  children's  epi 
demic  !  I'll  take  care  of  the  children's  epi 
demic, "  repeated  the  doctor,  pulling  the  long- 
faced,  autumn-faced  prodigy  of  all  questions 
between  his  knees  and  looking  him  over  with 
secret  solicitude.  "We'll  not  talk  about  sick 
children,  but  about  two  well  children  —  thanked 
be  the  Father  of  all  children  !  So  you  and 
Elsie  are  going  away  to  help  celebrate  a  Christ 
mas  Tree." 

"Yes;  but  when  are  you  going  to  have  a 
Christmas  Tree  of  our  own  ?" 

Now,  that  subject  had  two  prongs,  and  the 
doctor  seized  the  prong  that  did  not  pierce 
family  affairs  —  did  not  pierce  him.  He  settled 
down  to  the  subject  with  splendid  warmth  and 
heartiness :  — 

"Well,  let  me  see !  You  may  have  your 
first  Christmas  Tree  as  soon  as  you  are  old 
enough  to  commence  to  do  things  for  other 
people;  as  soon  as  you  can  receive  into  your 
head  the  smallest  hard  pill  of  an  idea  about 


58  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

your  duty  to  millions  and  millions  and  millions 
of  your  fellow  medicine  takers.  Can  you  under 
stand  that?" 

" Gracious!  That  would  be  a  big  pill  — 
larger  than  my  head !  I  don't  see  what  it  has 
to  do  with  one  miserable  little  dead  pine  tree  !" 

The  doctor  roared. 

"It  has  this  to  do  with  one  miserable  dead 
pine  tree :  don't  you  know  yet  that  Christmas 
Trees  are  in  memory  of  .a  boy  who  was  once 
exactly  your  age  and  height  —  and  perhaps 
with  your  appetite  —  and  with  just  as  many 
eyes  and  possibly  even  more  questions?  The 
boy  grew  up  to  be  a  man.  The  man  became  a 
teacher.  The  teacher  became  a  neighborhood 
doctor.  The  neighborhood  doctor  became  the 
greatest  physician  of  the  world  —  and  he  never 
took  a  fee !" 

"Ah,  yes  !  But  he  wasn't  a  better  doctor 
than  you  are,  was  he?  If  he'd  come  into  this 
neighborhood  and  tried  to  practise,  you'd  soon 
have  ousted  him,  wouldn't  you,  with  your  doses 
and  soups  and  jellies  ?" 

"Humph!"  grunted  the  doctor  with  a  wry 
twist  of  the  mouth;  "I  suppose  I  would! 
Yes  ;  undoubtedly  I'd  have  ousted  him  !  He 
could  never  have  competed  with  me  in  my 
practice  ;  never  !  But  we  won't  try  that  hard 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    59 

little  pill  of  an  idea  any  more.  We'll  drop  the 
subject  of  Christmas  Trees  for  one  more  year. 
Perhaps  by  that  tune  you  can  take  the  pill  as 
a  powder  !  So  !  I  hear  you  are  going  to  attend 
a  dancing  party ;  we'll  talk  about  the  party. 
And  you  are  going  over  there  to  stay  all  night. 
I  wish  I  were  going.  I  wish  I  were  going  over 
there  to  stay  all  night,"  reiterated  the  man, 
with  an  outrush  of  solemn  tenderness  that 
reached  back  through  vain  years,  through  so 
many  parched,  unfilled  years. 

"I  wish  so,  too,"  cried  the  boy,  instantly 
burying  his  face  on  his  father's  coat-sleeve, 
then  lifting  it  again  and  looking  at  him  with  a 
guilty  flush  which  the  doctor  did  not  observe. 

"Oh,  do  you  !  We  won't  say  anything  more 
about  that,  though  I'm  glad  you'd  like  to  have 
me  along.  Now  then;  go  and  have  a  good 
time !  And  take  long  steps  and  large  mouth- 
fuls  !  And  you  might  do  well  to  remember 
that  a  boy's  stomach  is  not  a  birdnest  to  be 
lined  with  candy  eggs." 

"I  think  candy  eggs  would  make  a  very  good 
lining,  better  than  real  eggs;  and  about  half 
the  time  you're  trying  to  line  me  with  them, 
aren't  you  ?  With  all  the  sulphur  hi  them ! 
And  I  do  hate  sulphur,  and  I  have  always  hated 
it  since  the  boy  at  my  desk  in  school  wore  a 


60  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

bag  of  it  around  his  neck  under  his  shirt  to 
keep  off  diseases.  My  !  how  he  smelt  —  worse 
than  contagion  !  Candy  eggs  would  make  a 
very  good  lining  ;  even  the  regular  soldiers  get 
candy  in  their  rations  now.  And  they  don't 
have  to  eat  new-laid  eggs  of  mornings  !  Think 
of  an  army  having  to  win  a  hard-fought  battle 
on  soft-boiled  eggs !  They  don't  have  to  do 
that,  do  they?" 

"They  do  not!"  said  the  doctor.  "They 
positively  do  not !  But  we  won't  say  anything 
more  about  eggs  —  saccharine  or  sulphurous. 
What  are  you  going  to  do  at  the  party?" 

"I  am  going  to  dance." 

"Alone?  O  dear  !  All  alone?  You'd  better 
go  skate  on  the  ice  !  Not  all  alone?" 

"I  should  say  not !     With  my  girl,  of  course." 

"That's  better,  much  better.  And  then 
what?" 

"I  am  going  to  promenade,  with  my  girl  on 
my  arm." 

"On  both  arms,  did  you  say?" 

"No ;  on  one  arm." 

"Which?" 

"Either." 

"That  sounds  natural!  (Heart  action  regu 
lar;  brain  unclouded;  temperature  normal.) 
And  then?  What  next?" 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    61 

"I'm  going  to  take  the  darling  in  to  supper." 

"Hold  on!  Not  so  fast!  Suppose  there 
isn't  any  supper  —  for  the  darling." 

"Don't  say  that !  It  would  nearly  kill  me ! 
Don't  you  suppose  there'll  be  any  supper?" 

"I'm  afraid  there  will  be.  Well,  after  the 
darling  has  had  her  fatal  supper?  (Of  course 
you  won't  want  any  !)  What  then?" 

"What  else  is  there  to  do  ?" 

"You  don't  look  as  innocent  as  you  imagine  !" 

"You  don't  have  to  confess  what  you'd  like 
to  do,  do  you?  Would  you  have  told  your 
father?" 

"I  don't  think  I  would." 

"Then  I  won't  tell  you." 

"Then  you  needn't !  I  don't  wish  to  know 
—  only  it  must  not  be  on  the  cheek  !  Remem 
ber,  you  are  no  son  of  mine  if  it's  on  the  cheek  !" 

"I  thought  I  heard  you  say  that  got  people 
into  trouble." 

"Maybe  I  did.  I  ought  to  have  said  it  if  I 
didn't ;  and  it  seems  to  be  the  kind  of  trouble 
that  you  are  trying  to  get  into.  (Temperature 
rising  but  still  normal.  Respiration  deeper. 
All  symptoms  favorable.  No  further  bulletins 
deemed  necessary.)  Well,  then  ?  Where  were 
we?" 

"Anyhow,  I've  never  thought  of  cheeks  when 


62  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

I've  thought  of  that;  I  thought  cheeks  were  for 
chewing." 

" Guardian  Powers  of  our  erring  reason! 
Where  did  you  get  that  idea  —  if  sanity  can 
call  it  an  idea?" 

"  Watching  our  cows." 

The  doctor  laughed  till  tears  ran  down  his 
face. 

"You  can't  learn  much  about  kissing  by 
watching  anybody's  cows,  Governor/'  he  said, 
wiping  the  tears  away.  "Not  about  human 
kissing.  You  must  begin  to  direct  your  atten 
tion  to  an  animal  not  so  meek  and  drivable. 
You  must  learn  to  consider,  my  son,  that  horn 
less  wonder  and  terror  of  the  world  who  forever 
grazes  but  never  ruminates!" 

For  years,  in  talking  with  a  mind  too  young 
wholly  to  understand,  he  had  enjoyed  the  play 
of  his  own  mind.  He  knew  only  too  well  that 
there  are  few  or  none  with  whom  a  physician 
may  dare  have  his  sportive  fling  at  his  fellow- 
creatures,  at  life  in  general.  From  a  listener 
who  never  sat  in  harsh  judgment  and  who 
would  never  miscarry  his  random  words,  he 
had  upon  occasion  derived  incalculable  relief. 

"Anyhow,  I  have  learned  that  cows  have 
the  new  American  way  of  chewing;  so  they 
never  get  indigestion,  do  they?" 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    63 

"If  they  do,  they  cannot  voice  their  symp 
toms  in  my  mummied  ears,"  said  the  doctor, 
who  often  seemed  to  himself  to  have  been 
listening  to  hue  and  cry  for  medicine  since  the 
days  of  Thotmes.  "  However,  we  won't  say 
anything  further  about  that!  What  else  are 
you  going  to  do  over  there?  This  can't  pos 
sibly  be  all!" 

"  To-night  we  children  are  going  to  sit  up 
until  midnight,  to  see  whether  the  animals 
bellow  and  roar  and  make  all  kinds  of  noise 
on  Christmas  Eve.  We  know  they  don't,  but 
we're  going  to  prove  they  don't !" 

"Where  did  you  pick  up  that  notion?" 

"Where  did  you  pick  it  up  when  you  were  a 
boy?" 

"I  fail  to  remember,"  admitted  the  doctor 
with  mock  dignity,  damaged  in  his  logic  but 
recalling  the  child  legend  that  on  the  Night  of 
the  Nativity  universal  nature  was  in  sympathy 
with  the  miracle.  All  sentient  creatures  were 
wakeful  and  stirring,  and  sent  forth  the  chorus 
of  their  cries  hi  stables  and  barns  —  paying 
their  tribute  to  the  Divine  in  the  Manger  and 
proclaiming  their  brotherhood  with  Him  who 
was  to  bring  into  the  world  a  new  gospel  for 
them  also. 

"  I  don't  know  where  I  got  that,"  he  repeated. 


64          THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

after  the  animals  bellow  and  roar  and  make  all 
kinds  of  noise,  then  what  ?  " 

"  There  isn't  but  one  thing  more ;  but  that  is 
best  of  all!" 

"  You  don't  say  !     Out  with  it ! " 

"  That  is  our  secret." 

The  new  decision  of  tone  demonstrated  that 
another  stage  had  been  reached  in  their  inter 
course.  The  boy  had  withdrawn  his  confidence; 
he  had  entered  the  ranks  of  his  own  generation 
and  had  taken  his  confidence  with  him.  Per 
sonally,  also,  he  had  shut  the  gate  of  his  mind 
and  the  gate  was  guarded  by  a  will;  hence 
forth  it  was  to  be  opened  by  permission  of  the 
guard.  Something  in  their  lives  was  abruptly 
ended;  the  father  felt  like  ending  the  talk. 

"  Very  well,  then;  we  won't  say  anything  more 
about  the  secret.  And  now  you  had  better  run 
along." 

"  But  I  don't  want  to  run  along  just  yet.  It 
will  be  a  long  time  before  I  see  you  again;  have 
you  thought  of  that  ?  " 

He  reversed  his  position  so  as  to  face  the 
fire;  and  he  crossed  his  feet  out  beyond  the 
promontory  of  the  doctor's  knees  and  folded  his 
arms  on  the  rampart  of  those  enfolding  arms. 

For  a  few  moments  there  was  intimate  silence. 
Then  he  inquired:  — 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    65 

"How  old  must  a  boy  be  to  ask  a  girl?" 

A  flame  more  tender  and  humorous  burned 
in  the  doctor's  eyes. 

"Ask  her  what  f" 

' '  Ask  her  nothing  !    Ask  her  ! ' ' 

"You  mean  tell  her,  don't  you?  Not  ask 
her,  my  friend  and  relative;  tell  her !" 

"Well,  ask  her  and  tell  her,  too  ;  they  go 
together!" 

"Is  it  possible  !    I'm  always  glad  to  learn  !" 

"Then,  how  old  must  he  be?" 

"Well,  if  you  stand  in  need  of  the  opinion 
of  an  experienced  physician,  as  soon  as  he 
learns  to  speak  would  be  about  the  right  period  ! 
That  would  be  the  safest  age  !  The  patient 
would  then  have  leisure  to  consider  his  case 
before  being  affected  by  the  disease.  You 
could  have  tune  to  get  singed  and  step  away 
gradually  instead  of  being  roasted  alive  all  at 
once.  Does  that  sound  hard?" 

"Not  very!  Do  you  love  a  girl  longer  if 
you  tell  her  or  if  you  don't  tell  her?" 

"I'm  afraid  nobody  has  ever  tried  both  ways  ! 
Suppose  you  try  both,  and  let  us  have  the  bene 
fit  of  your  experience." 

"Well,  then,  if  you  love,  do  you  love  forever  ?" 

The  doctor  laughed  nervously  and  tightened 
his  arms  around  the  innocent. 


66  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"  Nobody  has  lived  forever  yet  —  nobody 
knows !" 

"But  forever  while  you  live  —  do  you  love 
as  long  as  that?" 

"You  wouldn't  know  until  you  were  dead 
and  then  it  would  be  too  late  to  report.  But 
aren't  you  doing  a  good  deal  of  hard  fighting 
this  morning,  —  on  soft-boiled  eggs,  —  though  I 
think  the  victory  is  yours,  General,  the  victory 
is  truly  and  honestly  yours  !" 

"I  can't  stop  thinking,  can  I?  You  don't 
expect  me  to  stop  thinking,  do  you,  when  I'm 
just  beginning  really  to  think?" 

"Very  well,  then,  we  won't  say  anything  more 
about  thinking." 

"Then  do  you  or  don't  you?" 

"Now,  what  are  you  trying  to  talk  about?" 
demanded  the  doctor  angrily,  and  as  if  on 
instant  guard.  A  new  hatred  seemed  coming 
to  life  in  him;  there  was  a  burning  flash  of 
it  in  his  eyes. 

"Just  between  ourselves  —  suppose  that  when 
I  am  a  man  and  after  I  have  been  married  to 
Elizabeth  awhile,  I  get  tired  of  her  and  want  a 
little  change.  And  I  fell  in  love  with  another 
man's  wife  and  dared  not  tell  her,  because  if  I 
did  I  might  get  a  bullet  through  me ;  would  I 
love  the  other  man's  wife  more  because  I  could 


A  BOY  FINDS  OUT  ABOUT  HIS  FATHER    67 

not  tell  her,  or  would  I  love  her  more  because  I 
told  her  and  risked  the  bullet  ?" 

Pall-like  silence  draped  the  room,  thick,  awful 
silence.  The  father  lifted  his  son  from  his  lap 
to  the  floor,  and  turned  him  squarely  around 
and  looked  him  in  the  eyes  imperiously.  Many  a 
time  with  some  such  screened  but  piercing  power 
he,  as  a  doctor,  had  scrutinized  the  faces  of 
children  to  see  whether  they  were  aware  that 
some  vast  tragedy  of  life  was  hi  the  room  with 
them.  To  keep  them  from  knowing  had  often 
been  his  mam  care ;  seeing  them  know  had  been 
life's  last  pity;  young  children  finding  out  the 
tragedies  of  their  parents  with  one  another  —  so 
many  kinds  of  tragedies. 

"You  had  better  go  now,"  he  urged  gently. 
Then  an  idea  clamped  his  brain  hi  its  vise. 

"And  remember:  while  you  are  over  there, 
you  must  try  to  behave  with  your  best  manners 
because  you  are  going  to  stay  hi  the  house  of  a 
great  lady.  All  the  questions  that  you  want 
to  ask,  ask  me  when  you  come  back.  Ask 
me!" 

The"  boy  standing  before  his  father  said  with 
a  strange  quietness  and  stubbornness,  probing 
him  deeply  through  the  eyes  :  — 

"You  haven't  answered  my  last  question  yet, 
have  you?7' 


68          THE  DOCTOR'S   CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"Not  yet/'  said  the  doctor,  with  strange 
quietness  also. 

The  boy  had  never  before  heard  that  tone 
from  his  father. 

"  It's  sad  being  a  doctor,  isn't  it  ?  "  he  sug 
gested,  studying  his  father's  expression. 

"  What  do  you  know  about  sad  ?  Who  told 
you  anything  about  sad  ?  "  muttered  the  doctor 
with  new  sadness  now  added  to  old  sadness. 

"  Nobody  had  to  tell  me  !  I  knew  without 
being  told." 

"  Run  along  now." 

"  Now  I'll  walk  along,  but  I  won't  run  along. 
I'll  walk  away  from  you,  but  I  won't  run  away 
from  you." 

He  wandered  across  the  room,  and  stood  with 
his  hand  reluctantly  turning  the  knob.  Then 
with  a  long,  silent  look  at  his  father — he  closed 
the  door  between  them. 


Ill 

THE   BOOKS    OF   THE    YEAR 

DR.  BIRNEY  stood  motionless  in  the  middle  of 
the  room  with  his  gaze  riveted  on  the  door 
through  which  his  son  had  lingeringly  dis 
appeared. 

Some  one  of  the  world's  greatest  painters, 
chancing  to  enter,  might  worthily  have  desired 
to  paint  him  —  putting  no  questions  as  to  who 
the  man  was  or  what  he  was ;  or  what  darken 
ing  or  brightening  history  stretched  behind  him ; 
or  what  entanglement  of  right  and  wrong  lay 
around  and  within :  painting  only  the  unmis 
takable  human  signs  he  witnessed,  and  leaving 
his  portrait  for  thousands  of  people  to  look  at 
afterwards  and  make  out  of  it  what  they  could — 
through  kinship  with  the  good  and  evil  in  them 
selves  :  Velasquez,  with  his  brush  moving  upon 
those  areas  of  lonely  struggle  which  sometimes 
lie  with  their  wrecks  at  the  bottom  of  the  sea  of 
human  eyes  ;  Franz  Hals,  fixing  the  cares  which 
hover  too  long  around  our  mouths ;  Vandyck, 
sitting  in  the  shadow  of  the  mystery  that  slants 

69 


70  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

across  all  mortal  shoulders ;  Rembrandt,  drawn 
apart  into  the  dignity  that  invests  colossal 
disappointment.  Any  merciless,  masterful  lim 
ner  of  them  all  in  a  mood  to  portray  those  secret 
passions  which  drive  men,  especially  men  of 
middle  age,  towards  safer  deeps  upon  the  rocks. 

He  had  a  well-set  soldierly  figure  and  the 
swarthy  roughened  face  that  results  from  years 
of  exposure  to  weather  —  a  face  looking  as  if 
inwardly  scarred  by  the  tempests  of  his  char 
acter  but  unwrinkled  by  the  outer  years.  Both 
face  and  figure  breathed  the  silent  impassiveness 
of  the  regular  who  has  been  through  campaigns 
enough  already  but  is  enlisted  for  life  and  for 
whatsoever  duty  may  bring ;  he  standing  there 
in  some  wise  palpably  draped  in  the  ideals  of  his 
profession  as  the  soldier  keeps  his  standard 
waving  high  somewhere  near  his  tent,  to  remind 
him  of  the  greatness  that  he  guards  and  of  the 
greatness  that  guards  him. 

Not  a  tall  man  as  men  grow  on  that  Ken 
tucky  plateau  ;  and  looking  less  than  his  stature 
by  reason  of  being  so  strongly  built,  square- 
standing,  ponderous  ;  his  muscles  here  and  there 
perceivable  under  his  loosely  fitting  sack-suit 
of  dark-gray  tweeds ;  so  that  out  of  respect  for 
strength  which  is  both  manhood  and  man 
liness,  your  eye  travelled  approvingly  over  his 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  71 

proportions :  measuring  the  heavy  legs  down 
to  the  boots ;  the  heavy  arms  out  to  the  wrists  ; 
the  heavy  square  thick  muscular  warm  hands ; 
and  the  heavy  torso  up  to  the  short  neck  rising 
full  out  of  a  low  turned-down  collar. 

In  this  neck  an  animal  wildness  and  virile 
ferocity  —  not  subdued,  not  stamped  out,  partly 
tamed  by  a  will.  Overtopping  this  neck  a 
tremendous  head  covered  with  short  glossy 
black  hair,  curling  blue-black  hair.  In  this 
head  a  powerful  blunt  nose,  set  like  the  muzzle 
of  a  big  gun  pointed  to  fire  a  heavy  projectile  at 
a  distant  target  —  the  nose  of  a  never-releasing 
tenacity.  Above  this  nose,  right  and  left,  thick 
black  brows,  the  bars  of  nature's  iron  purpose. 
Under  these  brows  wonderful  grayish  eyes  with 
glints  of  Scotch  blue  in  them  or  of  Irish  blue  or 
of  Saxon  blue ;  for  the  blood  of  three  races  ran 
thick  in  his  veins  and  mingled  in  the  confusions 
of  his  character:  blue  that  was  in  the  eyes  of 
earlier  Scottish  men,  exulting  in  heather  and 
highland  stag ;  or  the  blue  of  other  eyes  that  had 
looked  meltingly  on  golden-haired  minstrel  and 
gold-framed  harp — eyes  that  might  have  poured 
then-  love  into  Isolde's  or  have  faded  out  in  the 
death  of  Tristan ;  or  the  blue  of  still  other  eyes 
— archers  who  had  shot  their  last  arrows  and, 
dying,  drew  themselves  to  the  feet  of  Harold, 


72  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

their  blue-eyed  king  fighting  for  Saxon  Eng 
land's  right  and  might. 

They  were  eyes  that  could  look  you  to  the  core 
with  intelligence  and  then  rest  upon  you  from 
the  outside  with  sympathy  for  all  that  he  had 
seen  to  be  human  in  you  whether  of  strength  or 
of  weakness  —  but  never  of  meanness.  Under 
the  blunt  nose  a  thick  stubby  mustache  trimmed 
short,  leaving  exposed  the  whole  red  mouth  — 
the  mouth  of  great  passions  —  no  paltry  passions 
—  none  despicable  or  contemptible. 

On  the  whole  a  man  who  advances  upon  you 
with  all  there  is  in  him  and  without  waiting  for 
you  to  advance  upon  him ;  no  stepping  aside  for 
people  in  this  world  by  this  man,  nor  stepping 
timidly  over  things.  Even  as  he  stood  there  a 
motionless  figure,  he  diffused  an  influence  most 
warm  and  human,  gay  and  tragic,  irresistible. 
A  man  loved  secretly  or  openly  by  many  women. 
A  man  that  men  were  glad  to  come  to  confide  in, 
when  they  crossed  the  frontiers  of  what  Balzac, 
speaking  of  the  soldiers  of  Napoleon,  called  their 
miserable  joys  and  joyous  miseries. 

But  assuredly  not  a  man  to  be  put  to 
gether  by  piecemeal  description  such  as  this : 
the  very  secret  of  his  immense  influence  being 
some  charm  of  mystery,  as  there  is  mystery 
in  all  the  people  that  win  us  and  rule  us  and  hold 


THE   BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  73 

us ;  as  though  we  pressed  our  ear  against  this 
mystery  and  caught  there  the  sound  of  a  mean 
ing  vaster  than  ourselves  —  not  meant  for  us 
but  flowing  away  from  us  along  the  unbroken 
channels  of  the  universe:  still  to  be  flowing 
there  long  after  we  ourselves  are  stilled. 

Thus  he  stood  in  his  library  that  morning 
when  his  son  left  him,  brought  to  a  stop  in  the 
road  of  life  as  by  a  straw  fallen  at  his  feet  borne 
on  a  rising  wind  —  another  harbinger  of  a  coming 
storm. 

By  and  by  not  far  away  a  door  on  that  side  of 
the  house  was  slammed.  The  sound  of  muffled 
feet  was  heard  on  the  porch  and  then  the  laugh 
ter  of  children  as  they  bounded  across  the  yard. 
As  his  ear  caught  the  noises,  he  hurried  to  the 
window  and  looked  out;  and  then  he  threw  up 
the  sash  and  hailed  them  loudly  :  — 

"Ho,  there!  you  winter  snow-birds  without 
wings !" 

As  the  children  wheeled  and  paused,  he  smiled 
and  shook  his  forefinger  : — 

"  Remember  to  keep  those  two  red  mouths 
closed  and  to  breathe  through  those  two  red 
noses  !"  and  then  as  he  recalled  some  exercises 
which  he  had  lately  been  putting  them  through,  he 
added  with  ironic  emphasis,  laughing  the  while: — 


74  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"And  when  you  breathe,  remember  to  bring 
into  play  those  two  invaluable  little  American 
diaphragms  and  those  two  priceless  pairs  of 
American  ribs  !" 

The  little  girl  nodded  repeatedly  to  indicate 
that  she  could  understand  if  she  would  and 
would  obey  if  she  cared ;  and  putting  her  red- 
mittened  finger-tips  to  her  lips,  she  threw  him 
a  good-by  with  a  wide  sweeping  gesture  of  the 
arms  to  right  and  left.  And  the  boy  made  a 
soldierly  salute,  touching  a  hand  to  his  skull-cap 
with  the  uncouth  rigor  of  a  veteran  in  the  raw : 
then  they  bounded  off  again. 

The  doctor  drew  down  the  sash  and  watched 
them. 

A  hundred  yards  from  the  house  the  ground 
sloped  to  a  limestone  spring  at  the  foot  of 
the  hill — a  characteristic  Kentucky  formation. 
From  this  spring  issued  a  brook,  on  the  banks 
of  which  stood  a  clump  of  forest  trees,  bathing 
their  roots  in  the  moisture.  Upon  reaching  the 
brow  of  this  hill,  the  boy  lagged  behind  his  sister 
as  though  to  elude  her  observation ;  then  turning 
looked  back  at  his  father  —  looked  but  made 
no  sign :  a  little  upright  pillar  of  life  on  the  brow 
of  that  declivity :  then  he  dropped  out  of  sight. 

A  few  moments  later  up  over  the  hill  where 
he  was  last  seen  a  little  cloud  of  autumn  leaves 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  75 

came  scurrying.  As  they  neared  the  wall 
of  the  house  where  the  wind  by  pressure  veered 
skyward  to  clear  the  roof,  some  of  the  leaves 
were  caught  up  and  dashed  against  the  window- 
panes  behind  which  the  doctor  was  standing. 
Had  the  sash  been  raised,  they  would  have 
thrown  themselves  into  his  arms  and  have  dung 
to  his  neck  and  breast. 

He  did  not  know  why,  but  they  caused  him 
a  pang :  those  little  brown  parchments  torn 
from  the  finished  volume  of  the  year:  they 
caused  him  a  subtle  pang. 

He  turned  from  the  window,  goaded  by  more 
than  resolution,  and  crossed  to  his  writing-desk 
on  the  opposite  side  :  there  lay  the  work  mapped 
out  for  the  morning.  No  interruptions  were  to 
be  expected  from  his  patients,  though  of  course 
there  might  be  new  patients  since  accidents  and 
illnesses  befall  unheralded.  There  would  be  no 
visitors  —  not  to-day.  In  a  country  of  the 
warmest  social  customs  and  of  family  ties  so 
widely  interknit  that  whole  communities  are 
bound  together  as  with  vine-like  closeness,  no 
one  visits  on  the  day  before  Christmas.  In  every 
little  town  the  world  of  people  crowd  the  streets 
and  shops  or  busy  themselves  in  preparations  at 
home :  out  in  the  country  those  who  have  not 
flocked  to  the  towns  are  as  joyously  occupied. 


76  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

No  visitors,  then.  And  the  children  were  gone — 
no  disturbances  from  their  romping.  The  ser 
vants  had  put  his  rooms  in  order,  and  were  too 
discreetly  trained  to  return  upon  their  paths. 

After  breakfast,  at  the  stable,  he  had  given 
orders  to  his  man  for  the  day  while  he  was  having 
a  look  at  his  horses  —  well-stalled,  well-groomed, 
docile,  intelligent :  at  his  gaited  saddle-horse, 
at  the  nag  for  his  buggy,  at  the  perfectly 
matched  pair  for  his  carriage.  As  he  appeared 
in  the  doorway  of  the  stalls,  each  beast,  turning 
his  head,  had  sent  to  him  its  affectionate  greeting 
out  of  eyes  that  looked  like  wells  of  soft  blue 
smoke  :  each  said,  "  Take  me  to-day." 

He  was  a  little  vain  of  being  weatherwise,  as 
is  apt  to  be  the  case  with  country-bred  folk: 
and  at  the  last  stable  door,  having  studied  the 
wind  and  the  sky  and  the  temperature,  he  had 
said  to  his  man  that  the  weather  was  changing : 
it  would  be  snowing  by  afternoon.  Usually  in 
that  latitude  the  first  flurry  of  snow  gladdens 
the  eye  near  Thanksgiving,  but  sleighs  are  not 
often  flying  until  late  in  December.  There  had 
been  no  snow  as  yet ;  it  was  due,  and  the  weather 
showed  signs  of  its  multitudinous  onset. 

He  felt  so  sure  in  his  forecast  that  he  had 
instructed  his  man  to  put  the  sleigh  in  readiness. 
He  himself  went  into  the  saddle-house  and  from 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  77 

a  peg  amid  the  gear  and  harness  he  took  down 
the  sleighbells.  As  he  shook  them  roughly,  he 
smiled  as  above  that  cascade  of  mellow  winter 
sounds  there  settled  a  little  cloud  of  summer 
dust.  He  observed  that  the  leather  needed 
mending  —  what  he  called  "a  few  surgical 
stitches";  and  he  had  brought  the  bells  with 
him  to  the  house  and  they  now  lay  on  the  floor 
of  his  office  in  the  adjoining  room. 

He  thought  that  if  it  should  snow  heavily 
enough  he  would  use  the  sleigh  when  he  started 
out  in  the  afternoon.  There  were  several  sick 
children  to  visit  on  opposite  horizons  of  his 
neighborhood.  The  sound  of  the  bells  as  he 
drove  in  at  their  front  gates  might  have  value : 
it  would  not  only  mean  the  coming  of  his  sleigh, 
but  it  would  suggest  to  them  the  approach  of 
that  mysterious  Sleigh  of  the  World  which  that 
night  they  were  expecting.  Afterwards  he  was 
to  go  to  a  distant  county  seat  for  a  consultation. 
His  road  home  was  a  straight  turnpike  :  it  would 
be  late  when  he  returned,  perhaps  far  in  the 
night ;  and  he  would  have  the  sound  of  the 
bells  to  himself  —  the  bells  and  his  thoughts  and 
Christmas  Eve. 

This  plan  of  Dr.  Birney's  regarding  the 
children  laid  bare  one  of  his  ideas  as  a  phy 
sician.  For  years  he  had  employed  increasingly 


78  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

in  his  practice  the  power  of  suggestion.  For 
years  life  as  he  sometimes  surmised  had  em 
ployed  the  power  of  suggestion  on  him.  He 
felt  assured  that  in  treating  the  sick  there  are 
cases  where  every  suggestion  of  happiness  that 
can  reach  a  patient  draws  him  back  toward 
life :  every  suggestion  of  unhappiness  lowers  his 
vitality  and  helps  to  roll  him  over  the  preci 
pice  :  the  final  push  need  be  a  very  slight  one. 
The  melody  of  sleighbells  falling  on  the  ears 
of  the  sick  children  that  afternoon  might  have 
the  weight  of  a  sunbeam  on  delicate  scales  and 
tip  the  balances  as  he  wished  :  he  believed  that 
many  a  time  the  weight  of  a  mental  sunbeam 
was  all  that  was  needed  to  decide  the  issue.  - 

He  looked  at  his  watch.  It  was  ten  o'clock, 
and  dinner  was  served  at  one,  and  he  had  a 
tranquil  outlook  for  three  hours  of  work.  The 
only  remaining  source  from  which  an  interrup 
tion  could  have  reached  him  was  his  wife.  His 
wife  !  —  his  wife  never  —  intruded. 

Not  three  hours,  but  two  hours  and  a  half, 
to  be  exact;  for  the  dining-room  adjoined  his 
library,  and  every  day  at  half  past  twelve 
o'clock  his  wife  entered  the  dining-room  to 
superintend  final  preparations  for  dinner  :  from 
the  instant  of  her  entrance  concentration  of 
mind  ended  for  him :  he  occupied  himself  with 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  79 

things  less  important  and  with  odds  and  ends 
for  mind  and  body. 

She  would  draw  the  shades  of  the  windows 
delicately  to  temper  the  light  according  as  the 
day  was  cloudy  or  cloudless;  she  would  bring 
fresh  flowers  for  the  table;  she  would  inspect 
the  clearness  of  the  cut  glass,  the  brightness  of 
the  silver,  the  snowiness  of  the  napkins ;  she 
would  prepare  at  the  sideboard  a  salad,  a 
sauce ;  she  would  give  a  final  push  to  the 
chairs  —  last  of  all  a  straightening  push  to  his. 
All  the  lower  drudgery  of  the  servants  and  all 
the  higher  domestic  triumphs  of  her  skill  led 
to  his  chair  —  as  to  a  kind  of  throne  where  the 
function  of  feeding  reigned.  With  that  final 
adjustment  of  the  piece  of  furniture  in  which 
his  body  was  to  be  at  ease  while  it  gorged  itself, 
with  that  act  of  grade,  the  doors  were  opened ; 
dinner  was  announced ;  he  walked  in,  and  faced 
his  wife,  and  dined  —  with  Nemesis. 

This  pride  of  hers  in  housekeeping  was  part 
of  her  inheritance,  of  the  civilization  of  her 
land  and  people  :  it  was  a  little  separate  dynasty 
of  itself.  Often  as  the  years  had  gone  by  he 
had  been  thankful  that  she  could  thus  far  find 
compensation  for  larger  disappointment ;  it 
helped  to  keep  her  a  healthy  woman  if  it  could 
not  render  her  a  happy  wife.  Near  the  sugar 


80  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

and  the  flour  she  could  perhaps  three  times  a 
day  realize  small  perfections ;  she  could  mould 
little  ideals  and  turn  them  out  on  the  shelf  and 
verify  them  with  a  silver  spoon :  an  ideal  life 
in  the  pantry  for  a  woman  who  had  expected 
an  ideal  life  with  him  in  library  and  parlor 
and  bedroom  and  out  in  the  world.  It  was 
all  as  if  she  sat  at  the  base  of  Love's  ruined 
Pyramids  and  tried  to  divert  her  desolation  by 
configuring  ant  hills. 

And  he  was  well  aware  that  this -pride  of 
housekeeping  was  the  least  of  all  the  prides  that 
grouped  themselves  around  that  central  humili 
ation  of  wifehood.  He  had  sometimes  thought 
that  if,  after  her  death,  over  her  were  planted 
a  weeping  willow,  mere  nutritive  pride  in  her 
dust  would  force  the  boughs  to  reverse  their 
natural  direction  and  shoot  upward  as  stiff 
as  a  spruce. 

The  dining-room,  in  the  old-fashioned  Ken 
tucky  way,  was  richly  carpeted;  but  the 
moment  she  set  her  foot  within  it,  he  could 
trace  her  steps  as  unerringly  as  though  she  had 
been  shod  with  explosives.  Likewise  she  sang 
to  herself  a  good  deal :  (he  had  long  ago  diag 
nosed  that  symptom  of  nervous  self-conscious 
ness). 

When  he  had  married  her,  voice  and  piano 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  81 

had  been  one  of  the  resources  he  thought  he 
would  hold  in  reserve  for  the  emptying  years ; 
music  would  fill  so  much  rational  silence.  It 
was  one  of  his  semi-serious  declarations  that  only 
two  people  more  or  less  out  of  their  senses 
could  keep  on  talking  to  each  other  till  death 
forced  them  to  hold  their  tongues.  But  with 
tragic  swiftness  and  sureness  a  few  years  after 
their  marriage  the  music  stopped,  the  piano 
was  shut. 

More  than  that  terminated.  After  two  chil 
dren  were  born,  there  were  no  more :  that  pro 
found  living  music  came  to  an  end  also.  And 
perhaps  one  of  the  deepest  desires  of  his  nature 
was  for  that  kind  of  long  union  with  his  wife 
and  for  many  children :  perhaps  the  only 
austerity  in  him  was  an  austere  patriarchal 
authority  to  people  the  earth  and  to  bequeath 
the  inheritance  of  it  to  his  seed. 

When  she  had  ceased  singing  to  him  soon 
after  marriage,  she  had  begun  to  sing  to  her 
self  —  habitually  during  this  half -hour  of  prox 
imity.  The  sound  took  up  a  fixed  abode  in 
his  ear  as  there  is  a  roaring  in  a  seashell.  He 
could  hear  it  miles  across  the  country;  it  was 
the  loudest  sound  to  him  in  this  world  —  that 
barely  audible  self-conscious  singing  of  his  wife. 

During  this  interval  also  she  addressed  her 


82  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

commands  to  the  maid  in  tones  lowered  not  to 
disturb  him.  He  could  not  hear  the  words, 
but  there  was  no  mistaking  the  tones  !  What 
beautiful,  eager,  victorious,  thrilling  tones  — 
over  a  dish  of  steaming  vegetables  —  over  a 
savory  toast !  They  forced  him  to  be  reminded 
that  the  nature  of  his  wife  was  not  a  brook  run 
dry;  its  leaping  waters  were  merely  turned 
away  into  another  channel.  Only  when  she 
spoke  with  him  did  the  cadence  of  her  tones 
sag;  then  all  the  modulations  ran  downhill  as 
into  some  inner  pit  of  emptiness. 

It  was  impossible  for  him  to  believe  that  the 
occasional  chuckle  and  cackle  of  the  maid  dur 
ing  these  whispered  colloquies  grew  out  of 
aspersions  winged  at  him  —  at  the  hungry  ogre, 
middle-aged,  almost  corpulent,  on  the  other 
side  of  the  wall;  at  the  species  of  advanced 
gorilla,  poorly  disguised  in  collar  and  necktie 
and  midway  garments;  and  with  wool  and 
leather  drawn  over  his  lower  pair  of  modern 
ized  walking  hands  !  Yet  the  truth  was  un 
deniable  that  when  dinner  was  announced  and 
he  went  in,  the  maid,  standing  behind  her 
mistress's  chair,  fixed  her  gaze  on  him  with 
fresh  daily  delight  in  understanding  or  mis 
understanding  the  wretchedness  of  the  house 
hold. 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  83 

The  first  time  he  had  ever  seen  this  maid  was 
one  evening  upon  going  in  to  supper.  They 
were  expecting  guests,  and  his  wife  wore  an 
evening  gown.  As  he  seated  himself,  he  became 
aware  almost  without  glancing  across  the 
table  that  something  novel  had  arrived  upon 
the  scene —  something  youthful  yet  as  im 
memorial  as  Erebus.  Behind  the  glistening 
whiteness  of  his  wife's  bust  with  its  cold  proud 
dignity,  there  was  something  sable  —  birdlike 
—  all  beak  and  eyes  —  with  a  small  head  on 
which  grew  a  kind  of  ruffled  indignant  feathers. 
He  tried  to  take  no  further  notice  of  the  appari 
tion,  but  could  not  escape  the  experience  that 
several  tunes  during  the  meal  he  rescued  his 
biscuit  as  from  between  the  claws  of  a  compet 
ing  raven. 

In  the  course  of  tune,  as  this  combination  of 
black  and  white  refused  to  dissolve  and  rather 
coalesced  into  a  duality  holding  good  for  meal 
hours,  he  felt  impelled  to  characterize  the  alli 
ance  —  to  envisage  for  his  own  relief  the  totality 
of  its  comic  gloom.  So  he  called  it  his  Bust  of 
Pallas  and  his  Nevermore.  And  his  Nevermore, 
perched  behind  his  Bust  of  Pallas  at  every  func 
tion,  fixed  her  dull  stupid  eyes  on  him  in  un 
ceasing  judgment.  He  was  never  quite  per 
suaded  of  the  human  reality  of  her ;  never  fully 


84  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

believed  that  she  reached  to  the  carpet:  and  he 
never  got  up  from  the  table  to  see  whether  she 
cast  a  shadow  on  the  floor ;  but  he  knew  that 
it  was  the  fowl's  intention  to  cast  whatsoever 
shadow  it  carried  about  with  it  upon  him. 

She  had  become  a  critic  of  his  domestic  rela 
tions.  This  servant,  this  mal-arrangement  of 
beak  and  eyes,  with  bare  brain  enough  not  to 
let  plates  fall  and  not  to  dangle  her  fingers  in 
scalding  water  nor  singe  her  head-feathers  in  the 
oven  —  this  servant  of  his  arraigned  him  in  his 
humanity !  And  if  this  servant,  then  all  his 
servants.  And  if  all  his  servants,  then  all  the 
servants  of  the  neighborhood.  The  whole 
Plutonian  shore  croaked  its  black  damnation  of 
him.  Of  him !  —  the  leading  citizen  of  his 
community,  its  central  vital  character  who  held 
in  his  keeping  the  destiny  of  a  people !  He 
had  a  vision  of  the  august  assemblage  of  them 
uplifted  into  the  heavenliness  of  an  African 
Walhalla  —  such  as  is  disclosed  in  the  last  act  of 
the  Tetralogy  —  all  gazing  down  upon  him  as  a 
profaning  Alberic  who  had  raped  the  virgin 
Gold  of  marital  love. 

On  a  near  peak  of  especial  moral  grandeur,  his 
Nevermore  stood  in  her  supernal  resentment  of 
his  wife's  wrong.  For  whatever  Nevermore  was 
not,  at  least,  she  was  woman.  And  what  woman 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  85 

fails  to  espouse  any  wife's  dignity  except  the 
woman  who  supplants  the  wife  ?  (Xot  even  she ; 
for  if  ever  in  turn  her  hour  conies,  her  first  out  en- 
is,  'I  might  have  known.') 

Dr.  Birney  did  not  have  three  hours  for  this 
morning's  business,  then,  but  two  hours  and  a 
hah" ;  and  forthwith  beginning,  he  took  from  his 
breast-pocket  a  small  book  and  transferred 
from  it  to  a  large  diary  his  notes  of  visits  to 
patients  on  the  day  preceding.  This  soon  done, 
he  was  ready  for  the  main  work. 

It  was  now  the  closing  week  of  the  year  when 
according  to  custom  he  posted  the  year's  books ; 
for  he  was  his  own  secretary.  By  New  Year's 
Day  his  accounts  were  about  ready  and  new 
books  were  opened. 

He  always  took  up  with  repugnance  this 
valuation  of  his  services.  It  was  to  him  one  of 
life's  ironies  that  hi  order  to  live  he  must  take 
toll  of  death.  He  must  harvest  his  bread  from 
the  fields  of  tears.  He  must  catch  his  annual 
treasure  from  those  rainbows  of  hope  that 
spanned  wear}'  pillows.  He  must  fill  his  wine- 
jar  by  dipping  his  cup  into  the  waves  of  Lethe. 
He  must  equip  his  very  stable  with  the  ferriage 
he  had  collected  on  the  banks  of  the  Styx. 

His  heart  was  never  in  his  bookkeeping ;  this 
morning  he  could  barely  fix  upon  it  his  thoughts  ; 


86  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

so  that  before  commencing  he  allowed  himself 
to  turn  the  leaves,  getting  a  distasteful  bird's- 
eye  view  of  this  panorama  of  neighborhood 
suffering  and  mortality  there  outspread  on  the 
table. 

Two  infants  in  January  had  had  scarlet  fever ; 
so  much  for  the  infants  and  the  fever.  A  boy 
had  had  measles ;  an  assessment  for  measles.  A 
girl  had  had  mumps ;  the  price  of  mumps.  An 
old  lady,  going  one  bitter  February  afternoon 
to  her  hen-house  to  see  whether  the  hens  had 
begun  to  lay,  had  slipped  on  the  ice-covered  step 
and  had  fractured  her  hip-bone;  damages  for 
the  friable  hip-bone  of  the  senile.  A  negro  man, 
stationed  in  an  ice-house  to  knock  to  pieces  with 
an  axe  the  blocks  of  ice  as  they  were  hauled 
from  the  pond,  had  had  his  feet  frost-bitten.  In 
April  a  stable-boy  had  been  kicked  in  the  groin 
and  bitten  in  the  shoulder  by  a  stallion.  This 
stallion,  in  whom  survived  the  fighting  traits  of 
the  wild  horse  and  defiance  of  man  as  an  enemy 
who  had  no  use  for  him  but  to  enslave  him  and 
work  him  to  death,  had  already  killed  two  stable 
men.  Too  valuable  for  the  stud  to  be  himself 
killed,  and  too  dangerous  to  be  approached  or 
handled,  it  was  decided  to  destroy  his  eyesight ; 
and  the  doctor  had  been  called  in  to  treat  both 
stable-boy  and  stallion.  There  was  a  bill  for 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  87 

his  services  to  the  boy ;  none  for  the  stallion ;  he 
was  not  a  veterinary.  But  it  was  his  hand  that 
had  jabbed  the  long  needle  into  those  virile  uncon 
querable  eyes  —  leaving  that  Samson  Agonistes 
of  the  herd  whose  only  crime  had  been  to  reject 
civilization,  as  was  his  right.  There  was  no  one 
to  put  out  the  doctor's  eyes,  who  also  had  re 
jected  civilization :  which  was  not  his  right. 

In  June  a  lad,  climbing  a  cherry  tree  with  the 
ambition  to  capture  the  earliest  cherries  dan 
gling  scarlet,  had  fallen  flat  upon  his  back  when 
the  limb  had  split  from  the  half-rotten  trunk, 
thus  jarring  his  spine.  It  was  a  bad  case;  he 
must  now  make  out  a  good  bill  for  it,  otherwise 
the  father  would  feel  resentful. 

In  harvest  time  one  of  his  friends,  a  young 
farmer,  overheated,  went  bathing  too  soon  in  a 
fresh-water  pond  —  made  cooler  by  a  recent 
hail-storm ;  between  the  leaves  lay  a  note  from 
his  widow,  with  its  deep  black  border  and  its 
mourning  perfume ;  she  had  asked  for  the  ac 
count  —  had  asked  punctiliously  to  pay  for  a  be 
loved  young  husband's  fatal  chill.  In  autumn 
two  barefoot  half-grown  brothers  were  cutting 
ironweeds  in  a  pasture  with  hemphooks;  the 
elder  by  too  heavy  a  stroke  had  sent  his  blade 
clean  through  a  clump  of  weeds  into  the  ankle 
of  the  younger,  slashing  it  to  the  bone. 


88  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Thus  the  record  ran  on  as  the  doctor  turned 
the  pages  in  a  preliminary  survey  of  his  chart 
of  suffering.  And  then  there  were  the  cases  of 
those  coming  into  the  world  and  the  cases  of 
those  going  out :  birth-rates,  death-rates.  He 
must  exact  of  Nature  his  fee  for  continuing 
the  existence  of  the  human  race ;  and  he  must 
go  about  among  his  friends  and  neighbors  and 
wring  money  out  of  them  because  those  they 
loved  best  had  merely  paid  their  own  decent 
debt  to  mortality. 

He  dipped  his  pen  into  the  ink,  drew  before 
him  some  blanks,  and  began  to  make  out  the 
bills.  The  rooms  were  very  quiet  and  comfort 
able  ;  winter  sunshine  entered  through  the  win 
dows  ;  the  Christmas  wind  frolicked  outside  the 
walls. 

To  be  forced  to  sit  there  and  say  to  the  world  : 
My  feelings  have  nothing  to  do  with  it :  you 
must  pay  what  you  owe !  Because  all  life 
is  payment ;  everything  is  a  settlement.  There 
is  but  one  that  is  exempt  —  Nature.  It  is 
only  she  who  never  fails  to  collect  a  debt  but 
who  never  pays  one.  Who  that  has  ever  lived 
our  common  human  life,  borne  its  burdens,  felt 
its  cares,  fought  against  its  wrongs,  who  but 
knows  that  Nature  is  in  debt  to  him  ?  But  what 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  89 

son  of  hers  has  ever  been  able  to  tear  his  due 
from  her ! 

More  may  be  learned  about  the  doctor  by 
an  inspection  of  his  rooms.  Of  these  there  were 
three,  with  a  small  fourth  chamber  as  an  ell  in 
the  house :  in  this  ell  there  was  a  single  bed, 
and  here  he  sometimes  slept  —  as  nearly  outside 
the  house  as  it  was  possible  to  lie  and  still  to 
be  within  it. 

The  room  in  which  he  now  worked  was  his 
library ;  communicating  through  an  open  door 
was  his  office;  beyond  the  office  through  another 
open  door  was  a  third  room  in  which  were  stored 
many  personal  articles  of  indoor  and  outdoor  use. 

Beginning  with  his  office,  you  derived  the 
knowledge  which  any  physician's  and  surgeon's 
office,  if  modern  and  complete,  should  afford. 
On  one  wall  hung  his  diploma  from  a  New  York 
Medical  College ;  on  another  a  diploma  from 
Vienna  for  post-graduate  study  and  hospital 
work. 

The  rooms  taken  together  bore  testimony  in 
their  entire  equipment  to  a  general  outside 
truth :  that  the  physician  who  lived  in  them 
was  not  a  country  doctor  because  he  had  been 
crowded  by  abler  members  of  the  profession  out 
of  the  cities  where  there  are  many  into  the 


90  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

country  where  there  are  none :  and  this  fact  in 
turn  had  its  larger  historic  significance. 

Almost  within  a  generation  a  radical  change 
has  taken  place  in  the  relation  of  town  and 
country  as  regards  the  profession  of  medicine. 
The  old  barriers  which  half  a  century  ago  sepa 
rated  the  sick  in  the  streets  from  the  sick  in 
fields  and  forests  have  been  swept  away.  The 
city  physician  now  twenty-five  miles  away  can 
often  arrive  more  quickly  than  a  country  doctor 
who  lives  five ;  and  a  surgeon  can  come  in  an 
hour  who  formerly  needed  half  a  day.  But 
many  now  living  with  long  memories  can  well 
remember  the  time  when  the  country  doctor 
ruled  in  his  neighborhood  as  the  priest  in  medi 
aeval  Europe  swayed  his  parish.  However  re 
mote,  he  was  always  sent  for.  His  form  was  the 
very  image  of  rescue,  his  face  was  the  light  of 
healing.  As  a  consequence,  the  country  often 
developed  leaders  in  the  profession.  Instead 
of  its  being  dependent  upon  the  cities,  these 
looked  to  the  rural  districts  for  many  of  the 
most  skilful  practitioners. 

This  was  strikingly  true  from  the  earliest 
settlement  of  the  West  on  that  immense  plateau 
of  forest  and  grass  land  which  has  long  since 
drawn  to  itself  the  notice  of  the  world  as  the 
loveliness  of  Kentucky.  It  was  on  the  southern 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  91 

boundary  of  this  plateau,  living  in  a  pioneer 
hamlet  and  practising  far  and  wide  through  a 
wilderness,  that  a  country  doctor  became  the 
father  of  ovarian  surgery  in  the  United  States 
and  won  the  reverence  of  the  world  of  science  and 
the  gratitude  of  humanity.  In  another  pioneer 
settlement  one  of  the  greatest  of  American 
lithotomists  spread  the  lustre  of  his  name  and 
the  goodness  of  his  deeds  over  the  whole  country 
west  of  the  Alleghany  Mountains ;  and  these 
were  but  two  of  those  many  country  doctors 
who  there  for  well-nigh  a  century  were  the 
reliance  of  their  people:  physicians,  surgeons, 
diagnosticians,  nurses,  pharmacists,  friends  — 
all  in  one. 

This  powerful  and  brilliant  tradition  had 
descended  to  Dr.  Birney,  and  he  had  worthily 
upheld  it.  In  some  respects  he  had  solidly 
advanced  it,  notably  hi  his  treatment  of  chil 
dren's  diseases. 

A  second  room,  in  which  the  articles  of  his 
personal  life  were  kept,  gave  further  knowledge 
of  him  as  a  man.  Outside  the  windows  there 
was  a  tennis  court ;  he  played  tennis  with  his 
children  and  with  young  people  of  the  neigh 
borhood.  You  saw  his  racquet  on  the  wall ;  and 
if  you  had  opened  a  closet,  you  would  have 
found  the  flannels  and  the  shoes.  Elsewhere  on 


92  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  wall  you  saw  his  reel.  In  season  he  liked  to 
fish,  when  his  patients  also  could  go  fishing,  or  at 
least  were  well  enough  to  feel  like  going ;  and  in 
the  same  closet  you  might  have  noted  the  residue 
of  a  fisherman's  outfit.  He  fished  not  only  for 
black  bass,  but  for  that  mild  pond  and  creek 
fish  prized  as  a  delicacy  on  Kentucky  tables  — 
a  variety  of  the  calico  bass  known  in  the  local 
vocabulary  as  "newlight." 

Still  elsewhere  you  saw  his  game  bag  and  bird 
gun  —  he  liked  to  call  it  by  the  older  word, 
fowling-piece.  He  hunted :  quail,  doves,  wild 
duck.  In  another  closet  you  would  have  been 
interested  to  discover  his  regalia  as  a  member 
of  the  Order  of  Masons ;  and  well  placed  beside 
it  his  uniform  as  a  member  of  the  State  Guard  — 
the  two  well  placed  there.  When  years  before 
his  neighbors  had  enrolled  him  in  the  Guard, 
they  had  saluted  him  as  one  more  Kentucky 
Colonel.  "I  will  submit  to  no  official  degrada 
tion,"  he  had  said;  "I  am  already  the  Com 
mander  of  the  whole  army  of  you  on  the  field 
of  your  human  Waterloo  :  salute  your  General!" 

His  library  added  its  testimony  as  to  other 
humanities.  Scattered  about  on  tables  and 
mantel-piece  were  fine  old  pipes  and  boxes  of 
cigars  and  playing-cards.  There  were  poker 
chips,  showing  that  the  doctor  had  poker  neigh- 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  93 

bors  (where  else  if  not  there?),  though  whist 
was  his  game.  You  realized  that  he  was  a  man 
at  home  among  a  people  who  loved  play  —  must 
have  play.  On  his  sideboard  were  temperate 
decanters :  he  had  sideboard  neighbors.  Al 
together  a  human-looking  room  for  much  that 
is  human;  easy  to  enter,  comfortable  to  stay 
in,  hard  to  quit. 

But  our  closest  friends  can  come  so  close  to 
us  and  no  closer ;  they  surround  us  but  none  of 
them  enters  us.  Nature  forbids  that  any  but  our 
own  feet  should  cross  the  bridge  spanning  the  dis 
tance  between  other  people  and  the  fortress  of 
the  individual.  Across  that  bridge  we  can  take 
with  us  no  companions  except  those  that  keep 
silent  amid  its  silences ;  that  can  speak  to  us 
but  that  cannot  see  us :  those  great  voices 
without  eyes ;  those  great  listeners  without  ears  ; 
great  counsellors  without  criticism ;  great  hands 
that  guide  and  refuse  to  smite;  great  judges 
that  embody  law  and  refuse  to  sit  in  judgment 
on  us  —  Books. 

Some  of  the  doctor's  books  held  for  him  life's 
indispensable  laughter;  and  no  one  of  us  ever 
tells  all  the  things  in  this  world  that  we  laugh  at. 
Some  held  for  him  life's  tears ;  and  no  one  of  us 
ever  tells  the  things  that  secretly  start  our  own. 
Some  held  neither  laughter  nor  tears  but  what  is 


94  THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

above  both  —  life's  calm ;  and  what  one  of  us 
but  at  times  feels  the  need  to  ascend  to  some 
inner  mountain-top  of  our  own  spirits  —  far 
above  the  whole  darkened  or  radiant  cloud-rack 
of  emotion  —  and  look  futureward  into  the 
promised  peace,  the  end  of  our  wandering. 
Joys  —  sorrows  —  and  calm :  these  three  for 
him,  too. 

Such  books  stayed  with  the  doctor  year  after 
year.  He  could  wake  in  the  night  and  find 
them  through  the  darkness ;  in  the  darkness 
they  knew  how  to  find  him.  They  were  not 
part  of  his  medical  library,  of  course,  which  was 
another  matter.  But  they  filled  three  sides  of 
a  large  low  revolving  bookcase  in  the  middle 
of  the  room  beside  his  easy  chair  and  his  lamp 
and  table. 

The  fourth  side  of  his  bookcase  held  the  books 
that  came  and  went  as  a  stream,  entering  and 
passing  on :  he  drank  from  them  as  they  flowed 
by.  Always  they  were  books  of  fiction  or  biog 
raphy  which  held  in  solution  the  truth  of  the 
human  matter  about  some  life  that  had  fought 
or  was  fighting  its  path  through  to  victory. 
Always  he  would  have  books  of  victory.  By 
preference  it  must  be  a  story  real  or  imagined  of 
some  boy,  youth,  young  man,  middle-aged  man, 
who  was  in  the  struggle  for  existence  and  who 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  95 

was  on  the  side  of  survival.  He  kept  in  mind 
the  words  of  a  great  Frenchman  that  the  way  to 
make  an  impression  upon  the  world  is  to  plough 
through  humanity  like  a  cannon-ball  or  to  creep 
through  it  like  a  pestilence.  But  he  knew  that  hi 
this  world  there  are  very  few  human  cannon- 
balls,  though  of  such  pestilence  there  is  always 
more  than  enough.  Rather  every  common  man's 
life,  and  every  uncommon  man's  life,  is  a  drawn 
sword  that  has  to  cut  its  way  through  all  other 
drawn  swords.  Here  were  the  books  which 
disclosed  the  mettle  of  a  character :  the  last 
magnificent  refusal  to  be  ruined  by  evil  which 
is  the  very  breath  of  a  man  and  the  slow  measure 
of  the  world's  advance.  So  that,  while  much  is 
always  failing  hi  everybody,  all  is  never  failing. 
Out  of  the  blackest  abyss  there  arises  in  the 
wounded  and  prostrate  some  white  peak  of 
unmelting  innocence  —  at  the  base  of  which 
Life's  battle  rages. 

Many  a  time  long  after  midnight  he  would 
read  to  a  finish  some  such  triumphant  story; 
and  with  a  murmur  of  "Well  done  !"  he  would 
close  the  book,  turn  out  his  lamp,  and  go  to  sleep 
in  his  chair  with  his  clothes  on  —  with  that  scene 
of  victory  emptying  its  echoes  into  his  ear  and 
his  dreams. 

Here,  then,  was  some  discrete  knowledge  of  the 


96  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

doctor  as  a  doctor  and  as  a  man.  But  there 
was  one  thing  in  his  library  that  blended  these 
two  separate  aspects,  showing  how  the  man  felt 
as  a  physician  and  how  the  physician  felt  as  a 
man.  This  was  a  series  of  pictures  running 
around  the  walls  and  connecting  great  epochs  in 
the  progress  of  Medicine. 

He  had  a  liking,  as  the  world  has,  for  some 
brief  series  of  climaxes  that  will  depict  a  sub 
ject  at  a  glance.  Very  memorable  to  him  was 
Shakespeare's  Seven  Ages  —  because  they  were 
seven  and  were  thus  easily  grasped  by  poetry 
and  reason.  But  he  knew  that  Shakespeare 
might  as  truly  have  substituted  another  seven 
—  with  as  good  poetry  and  reason  ;  or  he 
might  have  made  the  ages  fourteen  or  forty- 
nine  or  forty-nine  hundred;  for  actually  the 
ages  of  a  man's  life  are  infinite ;  but  being  re 
duced  to  seven,  we  all  recognize  them. 

And  memorable  to  him  likewise  had  been 
Hogarth's  Progress  of  the  Rake  with  its  few  pic 
tures  ;  and  his  Progress  of  the  Harlot  with  its  few  ; 
and  his  Progress  of  Marriage  a  la  Mode  with  its 
few;  and  the  Progress  of  Cruelty  with  its  fewest 
of  all  —  only  four,  but  more  than  enough  !  And 
yet  the  stages  in  the  progress  of  the  rake  and 
of  the  harlot  and  of  marriage  a  la  mode  and  of 
cruelty  are  infinite;  and  at  no  single  stage  in 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  97 

the  progress  of  any  one  of  them  could  you  actu 
ally  find  either  Rake  or  Harlot  or  Infidelity  or 
Cruelty.  Being  portrayed  as  few,  the  world  un 
derstands  and  finds  its  own  account  in  them. 

So  around  the  walls  of  his  library  there  hung 
a  series  of  pictures  showing  the  progress  of 
Medicine  across  the  ages. 

The  first  picture  represented  a  scene  in  the 
life  of  primitive  man,  during  the  period  when 
he  had  long  enough  been  man  to  form  into 
hostile  tribes,  but  not  long  enough  to  have  ad 
vanced  far  from  the  boundaries  of  the  brute. 
It  is  a  battle  picture :  the  battle  is  over :  the 
survivors  are  gone :  the  dead  and  wounded  lie 
about.  Medicine  as  a  human  science  has  not 
yet  been  born ;  surgery  has  not  yet  separated 
itself  from  the  movements  of  instinct.  Yet 
there  was  activity  among  the  wounded.  In 
some  of  the  warriors  you  saw  such  attempts  in 
the  care  of  their  wounds  as  one  may  witness 
to-day  in  wounded  birds  and  animals  —  if  one 
is  fortunate  enough  to  be  so  placed  as  to  be  able 
to  watch :  there  were  the  instinctive  devices  to 
cleanse,  to  protect,  to  alleviate :  those  low  be 
ginnings  of  the  great  science  which  you  may  ob 
serve  to-day  in  your  dog  when  he  has  come  home 
after  a  fight  with  lacerated  ears  and  slashed 
thighs  —  when  he  crawls  under  the  porch  to 


98  THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  darkest  corner  to  keep  away  other  dogs 
and  light  and  flies;  whose  sole  instrument  of 
cleansing  is  his  tongue  and  whose  only  bathing 
fluid  is  saliva.  On  that  battle-field  you  saw 
such  beginnings  of  surgery  as  to-day  is  prac 
tised  by  a  bird  treating  its  broken  wing  or 
broken  leg.  Thus  the  wounded  warriors  con 
cerned  themselves  with  their  hurts — all  mother- 
naked.  Along  one  edge  of  the  battle-field  was  a 
stream  of  running  water ;  some  had  started  to 
draw  themselves  toward  this  and  had  died  on  the 
way.  One  was  stretched  full  alongside — a  young 
chief  of  magnificent  proportions  and  a  face  of 
higher  intelligence.  And  out  of  that  intelligence, 
as  a  marvellous  advance  in  the  development  of 
man,  you  saw  one  action :  he  was  dipping  up 
water  in  the  palm  of  his  hand  and  pouring  it 
upon  his  wound.  At  some  moment  in  the  his 
tory  of  the  race  there  must  somewhere  have 
been  that  first  movement  of  the  developing 
animal  to  substitute  water  for  saliva.  That 
great  historic  moment  was  depicted  there.  It 
was  still  the  Azoic  Age  of  Medicine. 

Near  by  hung  a  second  picture.  Ages  have 
passed,  no  one  knows  how  many.  The  brute 
has  become  Prometheus ;  he  has  learned  the  use 
of  fire ;  and  he  has  learned  the  most  heroic 
application  of  flame  —  to  touch  it  to  himself 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE   YEAR  99 

where  he  is  in  greatest  agony :  that  is,  he 
has  learned  to  cauterize  his  wounds.  More 
than  fire  can  he  now  handle ;  he  has  learned  to 
bring  together  fat  and  flame;  and  he  has  dis 
covered  how  from  flame  to  produce  oil ;  and  he 
has  learned  to  pour  boiling  oil  into  the  holes  in 
his  body  made  by  the  implements  of  war.  It 
is  the  long  Ages  of  Medicine  for  the  cautery  and 
burning  oil. 

A  third  picture  hung  next.  More  ages  have 
passed,  no  one  knows  how  many ;  and  the 
scene  is  another  battle-field  far  down  toward 
modern  times.  It  is  France;  it  is  the  second 
half  of  the  sixteenth  century ;  it  is  warfare  in 
Piedmont.  Troops  are  sweeping  up  the  hill,  and 
in  the  background  is  a  walled  city  with  turrets 
and  towers;  and  in  the  foreground  wounded 
soldiers  are  arriving  or  are  lying  about  on  the 
ground.  There  is  a  rude  mass  of  masonry  used 
as  an  operating-table ;  and  on  the  operating-table 
is  a  soldier,  one  of  whose  legs  has  just  been  am 
putated  above  the  knee  ;  an  attendant  holds  the 
saw  with  which  the  leg  has  j  ust  been  sawed  off ,  and 
the  stump  of  it  has  dropped  below.  Beside  the 
wounded  man  stand  two  figures  :  one  the  figure 
of  the  past ;  and  the  other  a  figure  of  the  future 
—  a  poor  barber's  apprentice,  father  of  modern 
surgery,  named  to  be  massacred  on  St.  Bartholo- 


100         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

mew's  eve,  but  spared  because  none  but  a  despised 
Huguenot  could  be  found  in  all  France  skilful 
enough  to  safeguard  the  royal  orthodox  blood. 
There  beside  the  soldier  they  stand,  these  two,  and 
in  them  ages  meet ;  for  the  figure  of  the  past  holds 
in  his  hand  one  of  the  cauteries  that  are  kept 
redhot  in  a  brazier  near  his  feet ;  and  the  other 
holds  in  his  a  new  thing  in  the  world  —  a  simple 
ligature.  A  great  scene,  a  great  epoch :  the 
beginning  of  new  surgery  when  the  flowing  of 
blood  from  amputations  of  the  great  arteries 
could  be  stopped  by  a  mere  bandage  :  that  man 
—  Ambroise  Pare* ! 

More  centuries  have  passed  —  we  know 
exactly  how  many  now  from  year  to  year.  It 
is  the  nineteenth,  and  it  is  the  New  World ;  the 
next  picture  on  the  library  wall  portrayed  a 
scene  on  the  Western  frontier  of  a  new  civiliza 
tion.  It  is  the  backwoods  of  Kentucky,  it  is 
a  pioneer  settlement  of  three  or  four  hundred 
souls,  nearly  a  thousand  miles  from  any  hospi 
tal  or  dissecting-room.  In  the  front  door  of 
his  rude  pioneer  house  stands  a  Kentucky 
country  doctor,  Ephraim  MacDowell.  His  pa 
tient  is  before  him,  a  woman  on  horseback  in  a 
side-saddle.  She  has  just  arrived,  having  rid 
den  some  seventy  miles  through  the  wilder 
ness.  He  is  assisting  her  to  alight;  and  he  is 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE  YEAR      101 

soon  to  perform,  without  consultation,  without 
precedent  in  the  ages  of  surgery  (but  not  with 
out  a  prayer  for  himself  and  her),  by  strength  of 
his  own  will  and  nerve  and  by  the  light  of  the 
solitary  candle  of  his  own  genius,  an  operation 
which  made  Kentucky  the  mother  of  ovarian  sur 
gery  for  all  coming  time,  a  new  epoch  of  life  and 
mercy:  he  going  his  own  way  to  immortality  as 
Shakespeare  went  his,  as  the  greatest  always  go 
theirs  —  by  a  new  path  un trumpeted  and  alone. 

Another  picture  represented  a  scene  in  Boston 
in  1846,  less  than  half  a  century  later;  for  the 
lonely  mountain  peaks  of  progress  stretching 
across  the  ages  are  beginning  to  crowd  each 
other  now ;  they  are  beginning  to  run  together 
into  a  range  of  continuous  discovery.  That 
picture  also  shows  an  operating-room ;  and  there 
stood  the  American  Morton,  making  for  the 
world  the  first  merciful  use  of  anaesthetics : 
with  which  the  silence  of  painlessness  fell  upon 
humanity's  old  outcry  of  torture  under  treat 
ment. 

There  the  doctor's  pictures  ended.  In  our 
own  time  he  might  have  added  one  more  for 
the  epoch  of  the  Roentgen  Ray  and  another  for 
the  Finsen  Light ;  and  another  for  transfusion 
of  blood  ;  and  still  others  crowning  other  moun 
tain-tops  in  the  new  Surgery  and  new  Medicine. 


102         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Thus  he  had  before  his  eyes  in  his  library 
some  few  Ages  of  his  Science  —  as  it  went 
forward  and  slipped  back  and  missed  the  road 
and  forgot  the  road,  yet  somehow  steadily 
advanced  across  the  centuries  like  an  erring 
unconquerable  man  across  his  years.  Not 
progressing  however  as  a  man  grows,  from 
infancy  to  decrepitude;  but  moving  from  its 
old  age  toward  its  youth,  always  toward  its 
youth,  as  Swedenborg's  Angels  fly  forever 
toward  their  Spring.  It  ran  around  his  walls 
like  a  great  roadway,  connecting  the  last  dis 
coveries  of  his  Science  with  the  surgery  of  the 
wolf  who  gnaws  off  his  imprisoned  leg  and  with 
the  medicine  of  the  sick  dog  that  eats  grass. 

He  called  it  his  World's  Path  of  Lessening 
Pain. 

It  was  the  last  refuge  and  solace  of  his  often 
tired  and  often  wounded  mind.  Even  after 
friends  were  gone  at  night  and  the  poker  chips 
were  stacked  or  the  whist  counters  folded; 
after  the  sideboard  had  been  visited  and  tem 
perately  forsaken ;  after  the  abiding  books  had 
done  for  him  what  they  could;  in  the  still 
house  far  into  the  night,  he  would  sometimes 
lie  back  in  his  chair  and  survey  those  battle- 
pictures  of  a  science  on  which  he  was  spending 
his  loyalty  and  his  strength. 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE  YEAR      103 

Once,  in  younger  days,  outside  the  Eternal 
City,  he  had  gone  to  study  those  fragments 
of  the  Old  Roman  Aqueduct  that  to-day  are 
slowly  crumbling  on  the  Campagna;  and 
standing  alone  before  it  he  had  in  imagination 
searched  for  the  figure  of  some  young  workman 
who  had  helped  to  mould  those  brick  or  to 
finish  those  columns :  the  figure  of  some  ob 
scure  vanished  peasant.  So  the  great  wall  of 
his  science,  being  built  onward  across  the  cen 
turies  into  the  future,  would  be  revisited  by 
men  of  the  future  in  places  where  it  stood  in 
ruins.  He  would  be  as  one  whose  life  with  its 
mistakes  was  yet  linked  to  indestructible  good. 
He  would  vanish  from  beside  the  wall  himself, 
but  his  work  upon  it  would  have  helped  to 
uphold  humanity.  And  many  a  night  he  went 
asleep  in  his  chair,  committing  himself  to  his 
Science,  as  the  forgotten  Roman  laborer  of  old 
may  have  fallen  asleep  under  his  own  arch. 

But,  in  that  same  Italy,  northward  are  the 
Apennines ;  and  sometimes  in  travelling  through 
these  or  through  the  Swiss  glaciers  where  Nature 
measures  all  things  on  the  scale  of  the  sublime 
—  sometimes  as  your  eye  is  passing  from  snow 
peak  to  snow  peak,  suddenly  away  up  on  some 
mountain-side  you  will  see  a  human  hut ;  and 
standing  in  the  door  of  that  hut  a  single  human 


104         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

being ;  and  the  thought  may  come  to  you  that 
there,  in  the  heart  of  that  pygmy,  may  dwell 
sorrow  that  dwarfs  the  Alps. 

The  doctor's  library  had  such  a  picture :  it 
completed  the  story  of  the  room,  and  it  effaced 
everything  else  in  it.  In  a  somewhat  darkened 
corner  hung  a  framed  photograph  of  his  wife 
in  her  bridal  dress  made  not  long  after  their 
wedding.  Once  his  photograph  had  hung  beside 
it.  The  plaster  where  the  nail  had  been  driven 
in  had  either  fallen  out  or  it  had  been  torn  out. 
He  never  knew  —  he  knew  enough  not  to  ask. 

As  for  the  photograph,  there  stood  a  young 
bride,  looking  into  her  future  and  trying  to  con 
ceal  from  herself  what  she  saw  soon  awaiting 
her :  the  life  of  a  woman  wedded  but  not  loved. 
And  there  was  recollection  in  the  eyes  too : 
that  the  man  who  had  married  her  perhaps  in 
the  very  breath  of  his  wooing  had  wished  she 
were  another ;  that  at  the  altar  he  had  perhaps 
wished  he  were  putting  his  ring  upon  another's 
hand;  and  that  if  there  were  to  be  children, 
he  would  always  be  wishing  for  them  another 
mother. 

The  doctor  sat  there  that  morning  trying 
to  work  at  the  books  of  the  year.  The  rooms 
were  comfortable;  the  children  were  away  at 


THE  BOOKS  OF  THE  YEAR      105 

the  fireside  of  another  man's  wife ;  the  servants 
did  not  dare  disturb  him ;  his  horses  waited  in 
their  stalls ;  it  was  the  day  on  which  he  could 
begin  to  reap  his  golden  harvest  —  a  pleasant 
day  for  most  men ;  but  he  could  not  see  the 
blanks  before  him  nor  remember  the  names  he 
filled  in  nor  the  figures  that  were  for  value 
received. 

Because  there  lay  open  before  him  the  Book 
of  the  Years. 

And  coming  down  toward  him  on  the  track 
of  memory  through  this  book  was  his  life  from 
boyhood  to  middle  age :  first  the  playing  feet 
of  the  child  that  have  no  path  as  yet ;  then  the 
straight  path  of  the  boy;  then  the  winding 
road  of  youth ;  then  the  quickly  widened  road, 
so  smooth,  so  easy,  of  a  young  man ;  and  then 
the  fixed  deepening  rut  of  middle  age. 

And  now  the  rut  of  middle  age  had  come  to 
its  forks :  north  fork  and  south  fork ;  or  east 
fork  and  west  fork  —  he  must  choose. 

Whoso  cares  to  know  where  and  how  the 
doctor's  life-path  started  and  across  what  kind 
of  country  it  had  run  until  now,  a  middle-aged 
man,  he  sat  there  this  day  at  the  tragedy  of  its 
forking,  may  if  he  so  choose  follow  the  road  by 
the  chart  of  a  narrative. 

But   let  him  remember  that  this  narrative 


106         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE. 

goes  back  into  a  society  unlike  that  of  to-day 
and  into  a  Kentucky  that  has  vanished.  Back 
there  are  other  manners,  other  customs,  other 
types  of  men :  a  different  light  on  the  world 
altogether. 


IV 

THE   BOOK   OF  THE   YEARS 

MORE  than  half  a  century  ago,  or  during  the 
decade  of  1850  and  1860,  when  American  life 
on  the  fertile  plain  of  Kentucky  attained  its 
ripest  flavor,  there  was  living  with  great  ease 
to  himself  and  others  on  a  large  estate  in  one  of 
the  bluegrass  counties  a  country  gentleman  and 
farmer  who  was  nothing  more :  nothing  more 
because  that  was  enough.  Being  farmer  took 
up  much  of  his  time,  and  being  a  gentleman 
took  up  the  rest. 

He  one  day  observed  that  his  prolific  heels 
were  beginning  to  be  trodden  upon  by  a  group 
of  stalwart  sons  nearing  manhood ;  or,  in  the 
idiom  of  that  picturesque  soil,  all  thickly  bunched 
in  their  race  for  the  grand  stand.  Accord 
ing  to  the  robust  family  life  of  that  era  and 
people,  a  year  or  less  was  often  the  interval 
between  births ;  and  a  father,  slanting  his  eyes 
upward  to  his  oldest  who  had  just  reached 
twenty-one,  might  catch  a  glimpse  of  a  fourth 
son  smiling  loyally  at  him  from  the  top  of  the 
rank  stalk  of  eighteen. 

107 


108         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

This  juvenescent  and  prodigal  sire  clearly 
foreseeing,  as  many  of  his  neighbors  foresaw,  the 
emancipation  of  the  negroes  and  the  downfall 
of  the  Southern  feudal  system  and  thus  the 
downfall  of  the  Kentucky  gentleman  of  the 
feudal  soil,  could  see  no  further.  When  those 
grapes  then  ripening  went  into  the  winepress  of 
destiny,  there  would  be  no  more  like  them :  the 
stock  would  be  cut  down,  a  new  vineyard  would 
have  to  be  planted;  and  what  might  become  of  his 
sons  as  laborers  in  that  vineyard  he  knew  not, 
though  looking  wistfully  forth.  Therefore  he 
determined  to  store  them  away  for  their  own 
safeguard  among  those  ancestral  professions 
alike  of  the  Old  and  New  World  that  are 
exempt  from  political  vicissitude  and  dynastic 
changes. 

Now  it  happened  that  among  his  friends  he 
counted  the  great  Dr.  Benjamin  Dudley,  the 
illustrious  Kentucky  lithotomist  at  Lexing 
ton;  and  taking  counsel  of  that  learned  and 
kindly  man,  he  chose  for  his  first-born  stalwart 
—  since  the  stalwart  when  invited  to  do  so 
declined  to  choose  it  for  himself  —  the  pro 
fession  of  medicine ;  and  having  politely  packed 
his  trunk,  he  politely  packed  him  with  a  polite 
body  servant  and  a  polite  good-by  off  to  a 
medical  school,  the  best  the  Southern  States 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      109 

then  boasted — and  the  Southern  States  knew 
how  to  boast  in  those  days. 

But  the  colt  that  has  been  dragged  to  the 
water  cannot  be  forced  to  drink ;  and  the  semi- 
docile  son  could  not  be  made  to  introduce  into 
his  system  his  father's  professional  prescription. 
His  presence  at  the  medical  school  was  evidence 
in  its  way  that  he  had  swallowed  the  prescrip 
tion  ;  but  his  conduct  as  a  student  showed  that 
by  his  own  will  he  had  inhibited  its  action 
upon  his  vital  parts. 

In  the  year  of  finishing  his  course  of  lectures 
his  father  died ;  and  upon  returning  home  cer 
tificated  as  a  doctor,  he  returned  also  as  a  young 
blood  of  independent  fortune,  independent 
future,  and  independent  Feelings  —  the  last 
of  which,  the  Feelings,  he  regarded  as  by  far 
the  most  important  of  the  three.  At  the  bottom 
of  his  trunk  against  the  lining  was  his  diploma, 
on  the  principle  that  we  pack  first  what  we  shall 
need  last. 

The  immediate  use  this  golden  youth  made  of 
his  liberty  and  his  Feelings  was  to  take  over  into 
his  control  a  share  of  the  ancestral  estate  that 
fell  to  him  under  our  American  laws  of  partible 
inheritance;  to  build  on  it  a  low  rambling 
manor  house ;  and  into  this  to  convey  his 
portion  of  the  polished  family  silver  and  the 


110         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

polished  family  blacks.  Soon  afterward  with 
no  exertion  on  his  part  he  married  him  a  wife 
in  the  neighborhood ;  tore  up  his  diploma  as  if 
to  annihilate  in  his  establishment  the  very  recog 
nition  of  disease;  laid  off  a  training-track;  and 
proceeded  to  employ  his  languid  energies  in  a 
fashion  which  his  father  had  not  favored  for  any 
of  his  sons  —  the  breeding  of  Kentucky  thorough 
breds. 

Years  passed.  History  came  and  went  its 
thundering  way,  leaving  the  nation  like  a 
forest  blasted  with  lightning  and  drenched  with 
rain.  The  Kentucky  gentleman  of  the  feudal 
sort  was  gone,  having  disappeared  in  the  clouds 
of  that  history  which  had  swept  him  from  the 
landscape. 

The  mild  young  Kentucky  breeder  mellowed 
to  his  middle  years,  winning  and  losing  on  the 
road  as  we  all  must,  but  with  never  a  word  about 
it  one  way  or  the  other  from  him ;  early  losing 
his  wife  and  winning  the  makeshifts  of  widower- 
hood,  entering  so  to  speak  upon  its  restrictions ; 
losing  his  little  daughter  and  winning  a  nephew 
whom  he  adopted  and  idolized;  letting  him 
run  wild  over  the  house,  and  then  about  the 
yard,  and  then  about  the  farm,  and  then  across 
boundary  fences  into  other  farms,  and  then  into 
the  towns,  and  then  out  into  the  world. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      111 

There  were  parts  of  his  farm  that  looked  like 
English  downs;  and  on  these  fed  Southdown 
sheep ;  for  the  Kentucky  country  gentleman 
of  that  period  killed  his  own  mutton.  (He 
killed  pretty  much  his  own  everything,  even  his 
own  neighbors.)  No  saddle  of  mutton  out  of  a 
public  market  house  for  him  and  for  his  groan 
ing  mahogany.  And  so  it  seemed  well-nigh  a 
romantic  coincidence  that  the  fatherless,  mother 
less  boy  who  came  to  play  on  these  downs  should 
have  arrived  there  with  the  name  of  Downs 
Birney. 

The  Kentucky  turfman,  with  his  Southdown 
sheep  and  Durham  cattle  and  White  Berkshire 
hogs  and  thoroughbred  horses  and  Blue-dork- 
ing  chickens,  was  born,  as  may  already  have 
been  observed,  with  that  Southern  indolence 
which  occasionally  equals  the  Oriental's;  and 
as  more  time  passed  he  settled  into  the  deeper 
imperturbability  of  men  who  commit  their 
destiny  to  fast  horses.  Apparently  they  early 
become  so  inoculated  with  hazard  as  to  end  in 
being  immune  to  all  excitement.  As  he  could 
stroll  over  his  farm  without  having  to  climb  a 
hill,  he  had  perhaps  preferred  to  build  him  a 
low  manor  house  so  that  he  could  lounge  over  it 
without  having  to  take  the  trouble  to  go  up 
stairs.  In  the  chosen  business  of  his  life  it 


112         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

would  appear  that  he  had  wished  to  avail  him 
self  of  a  principle  of  Old  Roman  law:  that  he 
who  does  a  thing  through  another  does  it  him 
self  ;  and  thus  he  could  sit  perfectly  still  on  his 
veranda  with  two  legs  and  run  nearly  a  mile  a 
minute  on  a  track  with  four. 

A  rural  Kentucky  gentleman  of  dead-ripe 
local  pre-bellum  flavor :  exhaling  a  kind  of 
Falernian  bouquet  as  he  dwelt  under  the  serene 
blue  sky  on  a  beautiful  bluegrass  Sabine  farm :  a 
warm-visaged,  soft-handed,  bland-voiced  man 
—  so  bland  that  when  he  strolled  up  to  you 
and  accosted  you,  you  were  uncertain  whether 
he  was  going  to  offer  to  bet  with  you  or  to 
baptize  you.  Season  after  season  this  tranquil 
happy  Kentuckian  dwelt  there,  intent  upon 
making  nothing  of  himself  and  upon  making  the 
horse  an  adequate  citizen  of  a  state  that  likes 
to  go  its  own  gait  —  and  to  make  him  a  leading 
citizen  of  the  world :  measurably  he  succeeded 
in  doing  both. 

As  he  receded  from  view,  his  horses  advanced 
into  notice.  He  was  probably  never  better 
satisfied  with  his  stable  lot  and  with  his  human 
lot  than  when  at  one  of  his  annual  sales  he 
could  hear  the  auctioneer  —  that  high-gingered 
Pindar  of  the  black  walnut  stump  —  arouse  the 
enthusiasm  of  the  buyers  by  announcing  that 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      113 

a  certain  three-year-old  had  as  its  sire  the  Im 
mortal  Cunctator  and  that  its  dam  was  the  peer 
less  Swift  Perdition.  Year  after  year  he  dwelt 
there,  contented  in  drinking  the  limestone  water 
of  his  hillside  spring  with  his  foals  and  his  fillies ; 
drinking  at  his  table  the  unskimmed  milk  of  his 
Durham  dairy;  and  drinking  indoors  and  out 
doors  the  waterproof  beverage  of  a  four-seasons 
philosophic  decanter.  The  decanter  resembled 
the  limestone  spring  in  this  at  least:  that  it 
could  never  rise  higher  than  being  full  and  could 
never  be  baled  dry. 

In  the  vernal  season,  as  sole  proprietor  of  all 
this  teeming  rural  bliss,  he  sat  on  the  top  rail  of 
a  fence  and  witnessed  the  manufacture  of  the 
hippie  generations ;  in  summer  sat  on  the  top  rail 
of  another  fence  and  saw  his  colts  trained;  in 
autumn  in  the  judges'  stand  sat  with  a  finger 
on  his  watch  and  saw  them  win ;  in  winter, 
passing  into  a  state  of  partial  hibernation  over 
the  study  of  pedigrees,  his  fingers  plunged  deep 
hi  his  beard,  with  comfortable  mumblings  and 
fumblings  that  bore  their  analogy  to  a  bear's 
brumal  licking  of  its  paws. 

A  veritable  Roman  poet  Horace  of  a  man,  with 
yearlings  as  his  odes  —  and  with  a  few  mules 
for  satires. 

Surely  possessed  of  some  excellent  Epicurean 


114         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

philosophy  of  his  own  in  that  he  could  live  so 
long  in  a  wretched  world  and  escape  all  wretch 
edness.  If  storms  broke  over  his  head,  he  insisted 
that  the  weather  just  then  was  especially  fine; 
if  trouble  knocked  at  the  door,  he  announced 
with  regret  from  the  inside  that  the  door  was 
locked.  Is  there  any  wonder  that,  nobody 
though  he  insisted  upon  being,  his  appearance 
in  public  always  attracted  a  crowd?  for  the 
inhabitants  of  this  world  are  always  looking 
for  one  happy  inhabitant.  His  acquaintances 
hurried  to  him  as  they  would  break  into  a  play 
ful  run  for  a  barrel  of  lemonade  at  a  woodland 
picnic  when  they  needed  to  be  cooled ;  or  as 
they  waited  around  a  kettle  of  burgroo  at  a 
barbecue  in  autumn  when  they  wished  to  be 
warmed.  Hot  or  cold,  they  felt  their  need  to 
be  sprayed  as  to  their  unquiet  passions  by  his 
streaming  benevolence. 

Always  that  benevolence.  On  two  distinct 
occasions  he  had  placidly  reduced  by  one  the 
entire  meritorious  population  of  central  Ken 
tucky  ;  and  then  with  a  clear  countenance,  had 
presented  himself  at  the  bar  of  justice  to  be 
cleared.  Upon  his  technical  acquittal,  the 
judge  had  casually  said  that  no  matter  how 
guilty  he  was,  it  would  have  been  a  much 
fouler  crime  to  hang  a  citizen  with  so  innocent 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      115 

an  expression ;  that  the  habitual  look  of  inno 
cence  was  of  more  value  in  a  homicidal  commu 
nity  than  a  verdict  of  guilty  for  two  fits  of 
distemper ! 

If  the  world  should  last  until  Kentucky 
passes  out  of  history  into  the  classic  and  the 
mythological ;  if  Daniel  Boone  and  the  Wilder 
ness  Road  should  become  Orion  and  the  Milky 
Way ;  if  the  capture  of  Betsy  Galloway  should 
become  the  rape  of  Lucrece ;  if  the  two  gigan 
tic  Indian  fighters,  the  Poe  brothers,  should 
establish  their  claim  to  the  authorship  of  those 
Poems  and  Tales  which  even  in  our  own  time 
are  beginning  to  fall  away  from  a  mythical 
personage,  —  hardly  more  than  an  emanation 
of  darkness,  perhaps  this  unique  Kentucky 
gentleman  who  insisted  upon  being  no  one  at  all 
will  exhibit  his  beaming  face  in  the  heavens  of 
those  ages  as  Charioteer  to  the  Horses  of  the 
Sun. 

The  sole  warrant  for  here  disturbing  his 
light  repose  under  his  patchwork  of  turf  is 
that  he  had  taken  to  his  hearthstone  and 
heart  an  orphan  nephew,  whose  destiny  it  was 
to  be  profoundly  influenced  by  the  environ 
ment  of  heart  and  hearthstone :  by  this  breed 
ing  of  horses,  by  the  method  of  training  them ; 
by  that  serene  outlook  upon  the  world  and  that 


116         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

gayety  of  nature  which  attracted  happiness  to  it 
as  naturally  as  the  martin  box  in  the  yard  drew 
the  martins.  Possibly  even  more  influenced 
in  the  earlier  years  around  that  fireside  where 
there  was  no  women,  no  mother,  no  father, 
either ;  nor  parent  out  of  doors  save  the  mother 
hood  of  the  near  earth  and  the  fatherhood  of 
the  distant  sky. 

From  the  day  when  he  arrived  on  that  stock 
farm  its  influences  began  their  work  upon  him 
and  kept  it  up  during  years  when  he  was  not 
aware.  But  in  his  own  memory  the  first  event 
in  the  long  series  of  events  —  the  first  scene  of 
all  the  scenes  that  made  his  Progress  —  occurred 
when  he  was  about  fifteen  years  old.  As  the 
middle-aged  man,  sitting  in  his  library  that 
morning  with  the  Book  of  the  Years  before  him, 
reviewed  his  life,  his  memory  went  straight  back 
to  that  event  and  stopped  there  as  though  it 
were  the  beginning.  Of  course  it  was  not  the 
beginning ;  of  course  he  could  not  himself  have 
known  where  the  beginning  was  or  what  it  was ; 
but  he  did  what  we  all  do  as  we  look  back  toward 
childhood  and  try  to  open  a  road  as  far  as 
memory  will  reach,  —  we  begin  somewhere,  and 
the  doctor  began  with  his  fifteenth  year  —  as  the 
first  scene  of  his  Progress.  But  let  that  scene  be 
painted  not  as  the  doctor  saw  it :  more  nearly 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      117 

as  it  was :  he  was  too  young  to  know  all  that 
it  contained. 

It  was  a  balmy  Saturday  afternoon  of  early 
summer ;  and  uncle  and  nephew  were  out  in  the 
yard  of  the  white  and  lemon-colored  manor 
house,  enjoying  the  shade  of  some  blossoming 
locust  trees.  The  uncle  was  sitting  hi  a  yellow 
cane-bottom  chair ;  and  he  had  on  a  yellow  nan 
keen  waistcoat  and  trousers ;  so  that  the  chair 
looked  like  an  overgrown  architectural  harmony 
attached  to  his  dorsal  raiment ;  and  he  had  on 
a  pleated  bosom  shirt  which  had  been  polished 
by  his  negro  laundress  with  iron  and  paraffine 
until  it  looked  like  a  cake  of  winter  ice  marked 
off  to  be  cut  in  slices.  In  the  top  button-hole  was 
a  cluster  diamond  pin  which  represented  almost 
a  star-system ;  and  about  his  throat  was  tied  a 
magenta  cravat :  that  was  the  day  for  solferinos 
and  magentas  and  Madeira  wine.  But  the  neck 
of  the  wearer  of  the  cravat  was  itself  turning  to 
a  gouty  magenta;  so  that  the  ribbon,  while 
appropriately  selected,  was  as  a  color-sign 
superfluous.  On  the  grass  beside  him  lay  his 
black  alpaca  coat  and  panama  hat  and  gold- 
headed  cane  and  red  silk  handkerchief  and  a 
piece  of  dry  wood  admirable  for  whittling. 

He  had  been  to  a  colt  show  that  morning 
several  miles  across  the  country  in  a  neighbor- 


118         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

hood  where  there  was  some  turbulence ;  not  the 
turbulence  of  the  colts;  and  he  had  reached 
home  just  before  dinner  —  glad  to  get  there 
without  turbulence;  and  the  dinner  had  been 
good,  and  now  he  was  experiencing  that  com 
fortable  expansion  of  girth  which  turns  even  a 
pessimist  toward  optimism;  that  streaming 
benevolence  of  his  countenance  never  streamed 
to  better  advantage. 

He  was  reading  his  Saturday  weekly  news 
paper,  an  entire  page  of  which  showed  that  this 
was  a  great  thoroughbred  breeding-region  of  the 
world.  At  the  distance  of  several  yards  you 
could  have  inferred  as  much  by  the  character 
of  the  advertisements,  each  of  which  was  headed 
by  the  little  black  wood-cut  of  a  stallion.  The 
page  was  blackened  by  this  wood-cut  as  it 
repeated  itself  up  and  down,  column  after 
column.  Whether  the  stallion  were  sorrel  or 
roan  or  bay  or  chestnut  or  black  —  one  wood 
cut  stood  for  all.  There  was  one  other  wood-cut 
for  jacks  —  all  jacks. 

In  the  same  way  one  little  wood-cut  in  an 
earlier  generation  had  been  used  to  stand  for 
runaway  slaves :  a  negro  with  a  stick  swung 
across  his  shoulder  and  with  a  bundle  dangling 
from  the  stick  down  his  fugitive  back;  one 
wood-cut  for  all  slaves.  If  you  saw  between 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      119 

the  legs  of  the  figure,  it  was  a  man ;  if  you  did 
not  —  it  was  the  other  figure  of  man's  fate  hi 
slavery. 

The  turfman  read  every  item  of  his  news 
paper,  having  first  with  a  due  sense  of  proportion 
cast  his  eye  on  the  advertisement  of  his  own  stud. 

The  nephew  was  lying  on  the  grass  near  by, 
wearing  a  kind  of  dove-colored  suit ;  so  that  from 
a  distance  he  might  have  been  taken  for  a  huge 
mound  of  vegetable  mould;  he  having  just 
awakened  from  a  nap  :  a  heavy,  rank,  insolent, 
human  cub  with  his  powers  half  pent  up  and 
half  unfolded,  except  a  fully  developed  in 
solence  toward  all  things  and  people  except 
his  uncle,  himself,  and  his  friend,  Fred  Ousley. 
He  rolled  drowsily  about  on  the  soft  turf,  wait 
ing  to  take  his  turn  at  the  newspaper :  it  was 
the  only  thing  he  read :  otherwise  he  was  too 
busy  reading  the  things  of  life  on  the  farm. 
Once  he  stretched  himself  on  his  back,  looking 
upward  for  anything  and  everything  in  sight. 
The  light  breeze  swung  the  boughs  of  the 
locust,  now  heavily  draped  with  blossoms; 
and  soon  his  eyes  began  to  follow  what  looked 
like  a  flame  darting  in  and  out  amid  the  snowy 
cascades  of  bloom  —  a  flame  that  was  vocal 
and  that  dropped  down  upon  his  ear  crimson 
petals  of  song  —  the  Baltimore  oriole. 


120         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

He  liked  all  birds  but  three;  and  presently 
one  of  those  that  he  disliked  appeared  in  a  fork 
of  a  locust  and  darted  at  the  oriole,  driving  it 
away  and  then  returning  to  the  fork — the  blue- 
jay.  His  hatred  of  this  bird  dated  from  the 
time  when  one  of  the  negroes  had  told  him 
that  no  blue-jays  could  be  seen  at  twelve 
o'clock  on  Friday  —  all  having  gone  to  carry 
brimstone  to  the  lower  regions.  After  that  he 
and  Fred  Ousley  had  made  a  point  of  trying 
to  kill  jays  early  Friday  morning :  a  fatally 
shied  stone  would  cut  off  to  a  dead  certainty 
just  so  much  of  that  supply  of  brimstone.  He 
hated  them  even  more  on  Saturday,  when  he 
thought  of  them  as  having  returned.  The  one 
in  the  fork  now  was  looking  down  at  him,  and, 
with  a  great  mockery  of  bowing,  called  out  his 
Fiddle-Fiddle-Fiddle :  it  was  his  way  of  saying : 
"  You'll  get  there :  and  there  will  be  brimstone, 
sonny !" 

Of  course  he  believed  none  of  this  legend; 
but  suggestions  live  on  in  the  mind  even  though 
they  do  not  root  themselves  in  faith;  and 
memory  also  has  its  power  to  make  us  like  and 
dislike.  Presently,  as  he  lay  there  stretched  on 
the  grass  and  near  the  edge  of  the  shade,  another 
ill-omened  bird  came  sailing  cloud-high  across 
the  blue  firmament ;  and  having  taken  notice  of 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      121 

him,  —  a  motionless  form  on  the  earth  below, 
—  it  turned  back  and  began  to  circle  about  him. 
That  was  another  bird  he  hated.  When  a  child 
he  asked  about  it,  and  had  been  told  that  it 
removed  all  disagreeable  things  from  the  farms. 
He  thought  it  a  very  kind,  very  self-sacrificing 
and  industrious  bird  to  do  so.  And  he  conceived 
the  whole  species  of  them  as  a  procession  of  wheel 
barrows  operated  across  the  sky  by  means  of 
wings  and  tails.  Afterwards,  when  his  -views 
grew  less  hazy  on  natural  history,  he  lowered 
his  opinion  of  the  disinterested  buzzard. 

The  third  bird  on  which  had  fallen  his  resent 
ment  was  the  rain-crow  :  earlier  in  his  childhood 
it  had  been  told  him  that  when  the  clacking  wail 
of  this  songster  was  heard  on  the  stillness  of  a 
summer  day,  a  storm  was  coming.  And  he  had 
seen  storms  enough  on  that  very  farm  —  torna 
does  that  cut  a  path  through  the  woods  as  a 
reaper  cuts  his  way  across  the  wheat-field. 
But  he  saw  no  rain-crow  to-day ;  you  look  for 
them  in  August  when  they  haunt  the  cool  shade- 
trees  of  lawns. 

Altogether  these  three  birds  made  with  one 
another  a  rather  formidable  combination  for  a 
boy  living  on  a  farm  :  the  one  brought  on  storms 
that  threatened  life ;  the  second  gladly  presided 
at  your  obsequies,  if  the  opportunity  were 


122         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

given ;  and  the  third  was  pleased  to  accompany 
you  to  the  infernal  regions  with  the  necessary 
fuel.  The  arrangement  seemed  about  perfect ; 
apparently  they  had  overlooked  nothing  of  value. 

Thus  he  had  not  escaped  that  vast  romance  of 
Nature  which  brooded  more  thickly  over  Ken 
tucky  country  life  in  those  days  than  now :  a 
romance  of  superstitions  and  legends  about  bird 
life  and  animal  life  and  tree  life,  that  extended 
even  to  Nature's  chemicals ;  for  was  there  not 
brimstone  with  its  story?  As  far  back  as  he 
could  remember  he  had  been  made  familiar  with 
the  idea  —  rather  terrible  in  its  way  —  that 
there  was  a  variety  of  Biblical  horse  which 
breathed  brimstone.  All  alone  one  day  he 
had  made  a  somewhat  cautious  personal  exam 
ination  of  the  paddocks  and  stalls;  and  was 
relieved  to  discover  that  his  uncle's  horses 
breathed  out  only  what  they  breathed  in  — 
Kentucky  air.  He  felt  glad  that  they  were  not 
of  the  breed  of  those  Biblical  chargers. 

But  then  there  was  brimstone  in  reserve  for 
a  large  portion  of  the  human  family ;  and  with 
a  perverse  mocking  deviltry  he  pushed  his  in 
quiry  in  this  direction  still  farther.  Without  the 
knowledge  of  any  one  he  had  wasted  at  a  drug 
store  in  town  his  brightest  dime  for  a  package 
of  the  avenging  substance;  and  at  home  the 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      123 

following  day  he  had  scraped  chips  together 
at  the  woodpile  and  started  a  blaze  and  poured 
the  brimstone  in.  Actually  he  had  a  sample  of 
hell  fire  in  operation  there  behind  the  woodpile  ! 
There  was  no  question  that  brimstone  knew 
how  to  burn :  it  seemed  well  adapted  for  its 
purpose.  He  did  not  take  Fred  Ousley  into  his 
confidence  in  this  experiment :  the  possibilities 
were  a  little  too  personal  even  for  friendship  ! 

All  this  reveals  a  trait  in  him  which  lay  deeper 
than  child's-play — a  susceptibility  to  suggestion. 
Even  while  he  amused  himself  as  a  child  with 
the  shams  and  superstitions  about  nature,  these 
lived  on  in  his  mind  as  part  of  its  furnishings. 
Alas,  that  this  should  be  true  for  all  of  us  —  that 
we  cannot  forget  the  things  we  do  not  believe  in. 
To  the  end  of  our  lives  our  thoughts  have  to 
move  amid  the  obstructions  and  rubbish  of  the 
useless  and  the  laughable.  The  salon  of  our 
inner  dwelling  is  largely  filled  with  old  furniture 
which  we  decline  to  sit  in,  but  are  obliged  to 
look  at,  and  are  powerless  to  remove ;  and  which 
fills  the  favorite  recesses  where  we  should  like 
to  arrange  the  new. 

There  they  were,  then,  that  Saturday  after 
noon  :  the  uncle  with  his  newspaper  and  the 
nephew  at  that  moment  with  his  group  of  evil 
birds. 


124         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

There  was  an  interruption.  Around  the  yard 
with  its  velvet  turf  and  blooming  shrubs  and 
vines  and  flowers,  that  filled  the  air  with  fra 
grance,  was  a  plank  fence  newly  whitewashed. 
All  the  fences  of  the  farm  had  been  newly  white 
washed  ;  and  they  ran  hither  and  thither  across 
the  emerald  of  the  landscape  like  structures  of 
white  marble.  Through  the  gate  of  the  yard 
fence  which  was  heard  to  shut  behind  him  there 
now  advanced  toward  uncle  and  nephew  a 
neighbor  of  theirs,  the  minister  of  the  country 
church,  himself  a  bluegrass  farmer.  He  was  one 
of  the  many  who  liked  to  seek  the  company  of 
the  untroubled  turfman.  The  two  were  good 
neighbors  and  great  friends.  The  minister  came 
oftenest  for  a  visit  on  Saturday  afternoons,  as  if 
he  wished  to  touch  at  this  harbor  of  a  quiet  life 
while  passing  from  the  earthly  fields  of  the  week 
to  the  Sabbath's  holy  land. 

At  the  sound  of  the  latch  the  uncle  lifted  his 
eyes  from  his  newspaper. 

" Bring  a  chair,  Downs,  will  you?"  he  said 
in  a  cordial  undertone;  and  soon  there  was  a 
fine  group  of  rural  humanity  under  the  blossom 
ing  locusts  :  the  two  men  talking,  and  the  boy, 
now  that  his  turn  had  come  at  last,  lying  on  the 
grass  absorbed  in  the  newspaper. 

The   men   were    characters   of   broad   plain 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      125 

speech,  much  like  English  squires  of  two  centu 
ries  earlier  :  not  ladylike  men  :  Chaucer  might 
have  been  pleased  to  make  one  of  then-  group 
and  listen,  and  turn  them  afterwards  into  fine 
old  English  tales ;  Hogarth  might  have  craved 
the  privilege  to  sit  near  and  observe  and  paint ; 
and  a  certain  Sir  John  Falstaff  might  have  been 
at  home  with  them  —  in  the  absence  of  the 
"  Merry  Wives." 

There  was  another  interruption.  Around 
the  corner  of  the  manor  house  a  young  servant 
advanced,  bearing  a  waiter  with  two  deep 
glasses  well  filled  :  at  the  bottom  the  drink  was 
golden  ;  it  was  green  and  snow-white  at  the  top  : 
a  little  view  of  icebergs  with  pine  trees  growing 
on  them. 

The  servant  smiled  and  approached  with 
embarrassment,  having  discovered  a  guest ;  and 
in  a  lowered  tone  she  offered  to  the  master 
of  the  house  apologies  for  not  bringing  three. 

"This  is  yours,  Aleck,"  said  the  host,  holding 
out  one  glass  to  the  minister.  "This  is  for 
you,  Downs.  Now,  Melissa,  make  me  one,  will 
you?" 

"None  for  me,"  said  the  minister. 

"Then  never  mind,  Melissa.  But  wait  — 
lemonade  ?  " 

"Yes ;  lemonade.     It  is  the  very  thing." 


126         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"  As  it  is  or  as  it  might  be  ?  " 

"As  it  is." 

"  Lemonade  without  the  decanter,  Melissa." 

While  the  servant  was  in  the  house,  the  uncle 
and  the  nephew  waited  with  their  glasses 
untouched. 

The  turfman  was  very  happy  —  happy  in 
his  guest,  in  his  nephew,  in  himself,  in  every 
thing  :  his  mind  overflowed  with  his  quaint 
playfulness;  and  when  he  talked,  you  were 
loath  to  interrupt  him. 

"Aleck,"  he  said,  rattling  the  ice  in  his 
julep,  "don't  you  suppose  that  when  we  get 
to  heaven,  nothing  will  make  us  happier  there 
than  remembering  the  good  times  we  had 
in  this  world  ?  so  if  you  want  to  be  happy 
there,  be  happy  here.  This  is  one  of  the 
pleasures  that  I  expect  to  carry  in  memory 
if  I  am  ever  transformed  into  a  male  seraph. 
But  I  may  not  have  to  remember.  If  there  is 
any  pro  vision  made  for  the  thirst  of  the  Kentucky 
redeemed,  do  you  know  what  I  think  will  be  the 
reward  of  all  central  Kentucky  male  angels? 
From  under  the  great  white  throne  there  will 
trickle  an  ice-cold  stream  of  this,  ready-made  — 
and  I  shouldn't  wonder  if  there  were  a  Kentuck- 
ian  under  the  throne  making  it.  The  Kentucky 
delegation  would  be  camped  somewhere  near, 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      127 

though  there  will  be  two  delegations,  of  course, 
because  they  will  divide  on  politics.  And  don't 
you  fear  that  there  will  not  be  others  hastening 
to  the  banks  of  that  stream !  It  is  too  late  to 
look  for  young  Moses  in  the  bulrushes ;  but  I 
shouldn't  wonder  if  the  whole  ransomed  universe 
discovered  old  Moses  in  the  mint." 

"Which  mint?"  said  the  minister,  who  kept 
his  worldly  wits  about  him. 

" Aleck/7  replied  the  turfman,  "I  leave  it  to 
you  whether  that  is  not  too  flippant  a  remark 
with  which  to  close  a  gentleman's  solemn 
discourse.'7 

The  lemonade  was  served. 

"  Is  yours  sour  enough,  Aleck  ?  " 

The  visitor  found  it  to  his  taste. 

"  Is  yours  sweet  enough,  Downs  ?  " 

This  hurt  Downs'  feelings:  it  implied  that  he 
was  not  old  enough  to  like  things  sour.  He 
replied  surlily  that  his  might  have  been  stronger. 

The  servant,  watching  from  inside  a  window, 
judged  by  the  angle  at  which  the  glasses 
were  tilted  that  they  were  empty :  she  returned 
and  asked  whether  she  should  bring  'one 
more  all  around.' 

"More  lemonade,  Aleck?" 

"Thank  you,  no  more  for  me  —  but  it  was 
good,  better  than  yours." 


128         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"  Another  for  you,  Downs  ?  " 

Downs  thought  that  he  would  not  have 
another  just  for  the  moment :  the  servant 
disappeared. 

The  nephew  returned  to  his  paper.  The 
turfman  took  from  the  turf  a  piece  of  whittling 
wood,  split  it,  and  handed  the  larger  piece  to 
the  minister.  The  minister  produced  his  pen 
knife  and  began  to  whittle.  In  those  days  a 
countryman  who  did  not  carry  his  penknife 
with  a  big  blade  well  sharpened  for  whittling 
as  he  talked  with  his  neighbor  stood  outside 
the  manners  and  customs  of  a  simple  cheerful 
land.  And  now  the  two  friends  were  ready  to 
enjoy  their  afternoon  —  the  vicar  of  souls  and 
the  vicar  of  the  stables. 

The  minister  began  to  speak  of  his  troubles  — 
with  that  strange  leaning  we  all  have  to  let  our 
confidences  fall  upon  people  who  are  not  too 
good :  the  vicar  of  the  stables  was  not  too 
good  to  be  sympathetic.  It  was  all  summed 
up  in  one  sentence  —  discouragement  about  his 
growing  boys.  From  the  beginnings  of  their 
lives  he  had  tried  to  teach  them  the  things 
they  were  not  to  do ;  and  all  their  lives  they 
had  seemed  bent  on  doing  those  things.  He 
felt  disheartened  as  the  boys  grew  older  and 
their  waywardness  increased.  What  not  to  do 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      129 

—  morning  and  night  what  not  to  do.  Yet 
they  were  always  doing  it. 

Out  under  the  trees  the  peaceful  happy  sounds 
of  summer  life  in  the  yard  came  to  the  ears  of  the 
minister  as  nature's  chorus  of  happiness  and 
indifference.  The  breeder  of  thoroughbreds,  as 
his  friend  grew  silent,  laughed  with  his  peaceful 
nature,  and  remarked  with  respect  and  gentle 
ness  :  — 

"I  never  train  my  colts  in  that  way." 

"My  sons  are  not  colts,"  said  the  minister, 
laughing.  "Nor  young  jackasses  !  " 

"Yes,  I  know  they  are  not  colts ;  but  I  doubt 
whether  their  difference  makes  any  difference 
in  the  training  of  the  two  species  of  animal." 

After  a  pause  which  was  filled  with  little 
sounds  made  by  the  industrious  penknives, 
the  master  of  the  stables  went  into  the  matter 
for  the  pleasure  of  it :  — 

"You  tell  me  that  you  have  tried  a  method  of 
training  and  that  it  is  a  failure.  I  don't  wonder  : 
any  training  would  be  a  failure  that  made  it  the 
chief  business  in  life  of  any  creature  —  human 
or  brute  —  to  fix  its  mind  upon  what  it  is  not 
to  do.  You  say  you  are  always  warning  your 
boys;  that  you  fill  their  minds  with  cautions; 
that  you  arouse  their  imagination  with  pictures 
of  forbidden  things;  make  them  look  at  life 


130         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

as  a  check,  a  halter,  a  blind  bridle.  So  far  as 
I  can  discover,  you  have  prepared  a  list  of  the 
evil  traits  of  humanity  and  required  your  boys 
to  memorize  these :  and  then  you  tell  them 
to  beware.  Is  that  it  ?  " 

"  That  is  exactly  it." 

The  youth  lying  on  the  grass  laid  aside  his 
newspaper  and  began  to  listen.  The  two  men 
welcomed  his  attention.  The  minister  always 
found  it  difficult  to  speak  without  a  congrega 
tion  —  part  of  which  must  be  sinners :  here 
was  an  occasion  for  outdoor  preaching.  The 
turfman  probably  welcomed  this  chance  to 
get  before  the  youth  in  an  indirect  way  certain 
suggestions  which  he  relied  upon  for  his :  — 

"Well,  that  is  where  your  training  and  my 
training  differ, ' '  he  resumed .  "I  never  assemble 
my  colts  at  the  barn  door  —  that  is,  I  would 
not  if  I  could  —  and  recite  to  them  the  vicious 
traits  of  the  wild  horse  and  require  them  to 
memorize  those  traits  and  think  about  them 
unceasingly,  but  never  to  imitate  them.  Speak 
ing  of  jacks,  Aleck,  you  know  our  neighbor 
stands  a  jack.  And  he  would  not  if  he  could 
compel  his  jack  to  make  a  study  of  the  peculiari 
ties  of  Balaam's  ass.  But  you  compel  your 
boys  to  make  a  study  of  Balaam  and  his  tribes. 
You  teach  them  the  failings  of  mankind  as  they 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      131 

revealed  themselves  in  an  age  of  primitive 
transgression.  I  say  I  never  try  to  train  a 
horse  that  way.  On  the  contrary  I  try  to  let 
all  the  ancestral  memories  slumber,  and  I  take 
all  the  ancestral  powers  and  develop  them  for 
modern  uses.  Why,  listen.  We  know  that  a 
horse's  teeth  were  once  useful  as  a  weapon  to 
bite  its  enemies.  Now  I  try  to  give  it  the 
notion  that  its  teeth  are  only  useful  in  feeding. 
You  know  that  its  hoofs  were  used  to  strike  its 
enemies :  it  stood  on  its  forefeet  and  kicked  in 
the  rear ;  it  stood  on  its  hind  feet  and  pawed 
in  front.  You  know  that  the  horse  is  timid,  it 
is  born  timid,  dies  timid;  but  had  it  not  been 
timid,  it  would  have  been  exterminated :  its 
speed  was  one  of  its  means  of  survival :  if  it 
could  not  conquer,  it  had  to  flee  and  the  sen 
tinel  of  its  safety  was  its  fear ;  it  was  the  most 
valuable  trait  it  had ;  this  ancestral  trait  has  not 
yet  been  outlived ;  don't  despise  the  horse  for  it. 
But  now  I  try  to  teach  a  horse  that  feet  and  legs 
and  speed  are  to  serve  another  instinct  —  the 
instinct  to  win  in  the  new  maddened  courage 
of  the  race-course.  And  I  never  allow  the  horse 
to  believe  that  it  has  such  a  thing  as  an  enemy. 
He  is  not  to  fear  life,  but  to  trust  life.  I  teach 
him  that  man  is  not  his  old  hereditary  enemy, 
but  his  friend  —  and  his  master.  I  would  not 


132         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

suggest  to  a  horse  any  of  its  latent  bad  traits. 
I  never  prohibit  its  doing  anything.  I  never  try 
to  teach  it  what  not  to  do,  but  only  what  to  do. 
And  so  I  have  good  colts,  and  you  have  —  but 
excuse  me!" 

The  minister  stood  up  and  brushed  the  shav 
ings  from  his  lap  and  legs ;  then  as  he  took  his 
seat  he  covered  his  side  of  the  discussion  with 
one  breath :  — 

"I  hold  to  the  old  teaching  —  good  from  the 
foundation  of  the  world  —  that  the  old  must  tell 
the  young  what  not  to  do." 

"  Aleck,"  replied  the  vicar  of  the  stables 
with  his  quaint  sunniness,  "  don't  you  know  that 
no  human  being  can  teach  any  living  thing  — 
man  or  beast  or  bird  or  fish  or  flea  —  not  to  do  a 
thing  ?  you  can  only  teach  to  do.  If  there  is  a 
God  of  this  universe,  He  is  a  God  of  doing. 
You  can  no  more  teach  '  a  not '  than  you  can 
teach  'a  nothing.'  Now  try  to  teach  one  of 
your  sons  nothing  !  This  world  has  never  taught, 
and  will  never  teach,  a  prohibition,  because  a 
prohibition  is  a  nothing;  it  has  never  taught 
anything  but  the  will  and  desire  to  do :  that  is 
the  root  of  the  matter.  Do  you  suppose  I  try 
to  keep  one  of  my  cows  from  kicking  over  the 
bucket  of  milk  by  tying  her  hind  legs  ?  I  go  to 
the  other  end  of  the  beast  and  do  something  for 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      133 

her  brain  so  that  when  she  feels  the  instinct  to 
kick  which  is  her  right,  what  I  have  taught  her 
will  compel  her  to  waive  her  right  and  to  keep  her 
feet  on  the  ground.  That  is  all  there  is  of  it." 

They  were  hearty  and  good-humored  in  their 
talk,  and  the  minister  did  not  budge :  but  the 
boy  listened  only  to  his  uncle. 

11  Do  you  remember,  Aleck,  when  you  and  I 
were  in  the  school  over  yonder  and  one  morning 
old  Bowles  issued  a  new  order  that  none  of  us 
boys  was  to  ask  for  a  drink  between  little  recess 
and  big  recess  ?  Now  none  of  us  drank  at  that 
hour;  but  the  day  after  the  order  was  issued, 
every  boy  wanted  a  drink,  and  demanded  a 
drink,  and  got  a  drink.  It  was  thirst  for  prin 
ciple.  Every  boy  knew  it  was  his  right  to 
drink  whenever  he  was  thirsty  —  and  even  when 
he  was  not  thirsty;  and  he  disobeyed  orders 
to  assert  that  right.  And  if  old  Bowles 
had  not  lowered  his  authority  before  that 
advancing  right,  there  would  not  have  been 
any  old  Bowles.  There  is  one  thing  greater 
than  any  man's  authority,  and  that  is  any 
man's  right.  Isn't  that  the  United  States? 
Wasn't  that  Kentucky  country  school-house 
the  United  States?  And  don't  you  know, 
Aleck,  that  as  soon  as  a  thing  is  forbidden, 
human  nature  investigates  the  command  to 


134         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

see  whether  it  puts  forth  an  infringement  of  its 
liberties?  Don't  you  know,  Aleck,  that  the 
disobedience  of  children  may  be  one  of  their 
natural  rights  ?  " 

At  this  point  the  uncle  turned  unexpectedly 
toward  his  nephew  :  — 

"Does  this  bore  you,  Downs?" 

Downs  remarked  pointedly  that  half  of  it 
bored  him :  he  made  it  perfectly  clear  which 
was  the  objectionable  half. 

The  uncle  did  not  notice  the  discourtesy  to  his 
guest,  but  continued  his  amiable  observation  :  — 

"To  me  it  all  leads  up  to  this  —  and  now  the 
road  turns  away  from  colts  to  the  road  you  and  I 
walk  in  as  men.  It  leads  up  to  this :  the  differ 
ence  between  failure  and  transgression.  Com 
mand  to  do ;  and  the  worst  result  can  only  be 
failure.  Command  not  to  do ;  and  the  worst 
result  is  transgression.  Now  we  all  live  on 
partial  failure :  it  is  the  beginning  of  effort  and 
the  incentive  to  effort.  We  try  and  fail ;  with 
more  will  and  strength  and  experience  we  wipe 
out  the  failure  and  stand  beyond  it.  Long 
afterwards  men  look  back  and  laugh  at  their 
failures,  love  them  because  they  are  the  measure 
of  what  they  were  and  of  what  they  have 
become.  It  is  our  life,  the  glory  of  more 
strength,  the  triumph  of  will  and  determination. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE   YEARS  135 

It  is  the  crowning  victory  of  the  world.     And  it 
is  the  road  that  leads  upward. 

"But  transgression!  No  transgression  ever 
develops  life;  it  is  so  much  death.  You  can't 
wrest  victory  out  of  transgression :  it's  a  thing 
by  itself  —  a  final  defeat.  And  what  has  been 
defeated  is  your  last  safeguard  —  your  will. 
Every  transgression  helps  to  kill  the  will.  It 
weakens,  discourages,  humiliates,  stings,  poisons. 
The  road  of  transgression  is  downward." 

He  stood  up,  and  his  guest  with  him.     As  he 
lifted  his  alpaca  coat  from  the  grass  and  put  it 
on,  there  was  left  lying  his  bowie-knife,  and  he 
put  that  on.     It  was  the  bowie-knife  age. 
"Will  you  come  with  us,  Downs?" 
Downs  thought  he  would  now  read  the  news 
paper. 

"Where  is  Fred  Ousley  ?"  asked  the  minister  of 
him,  knowing  that  the  two  boys  were  inseparable. 
"He  has  gone  to  a  picnic." 
"Why  didn't  you  go  to  the  picnic?" 
"I  wasn't  invited :   it's  his  cousins'." 
"And  haven't  you  any  cousins  who  give  pic 
nics  ?  " 

"I  don't  like  my  cousins :  I  hate  my  cousins : 
Fred  hates  his  cousins :  it's  a  girl  that  goes  with 
his  cousins." 

"And  what  about  a  girl  with  your  cousins ?  " 


136         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"Well,  while  you're  talking,  what  about  your 
sons  and  their  cousins?  We're  running  this 
farm  very  well,  and  we're  all  pleased.  From 
what  I  have  been  hearing,  it's  more  than  can  be 
said  about  yours." 

The  minister  laughed  good-naturedly  at  this 
rudeness  as  the  two  friends  walked  away;  but 
the  vicar  of  the  stables  observed  mildly  :  — 

"  You  gave  him  the  wrong  kind  of  suggestion, 
Aleck.  It  wasn't  in  your  words  exactly;  I  don't 
know  where  it  was ;  but  I  felt  it  and  he  felt  it : 
somehow  you  challenged  him  to  employ  his 
manly  art  of  self-defence ;  and  part  of  that  art 
is  to  attack.  But  never  mind  about  Downs. 
Now  come  to  the  stable  :  I  am  going  to  show  you 
a  young  thoroughbred  there  that  has  never  had  a 
disagreeable  suggestion  made  to  him :  he  thinks 
this  farm  paradise.  And  the  five  great  things 
I  tried  to  teach  him  are :  to  develop  his  will,  to 
develop  his  speed,  to  develop  his  endurance  and 
perseverance,  to  develop  his  pride,  and  to 
develop  his  affection  :  he  is  a  masterpiece." 

In  the  green  yard  that  summer  afternoon, 
under  the  white  locust  blossoms  and  with  the 
fragrance  of  rose  and  honeysuckle  and  lilac  all 
about  him,  the  youth  lay  on  the  grass  beside 
the  newspaper — which  he  forgot.  A  new  world 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      137 

of  thinking  had  been  disclosed  to  him.  And 
he  made  one  special  discovery :  that  as  far  as 
memory  could  reach  his  uncle  had  never  told 
him  not  to  do  anything :  always  it  had  been  to 
do  —  never  not  to  do. 

And  he  was  a  good  deal  impressed  with  the 
difference  between  failure  and  transgression. 
He  did  not  at  all  like  that  idea  of  transgression ; 
but  he  thought  he  should  like  to  try  failure  for 
a  while;  then  he  could  call  on  more  strength, 
tighten  his  will,  develop  more  fighting  power. 
He  rather  welcomed  that  combat  with  failure 
which  would  end  in  success. 

He  wished  Fred  were  there.  It  was  Saturday 
he  came  to  stay  all  night;  and  the  two  were 
getting  old  enough  to  talk  about  their  futures 
and  at  what  ages  each  would  marry.  They 
described  the  desirable  type  of  woman;  and 
sometimes  exchanged  descriptions. 

And  then  suddenly  he  rolled  over  the  grass  con 
vulsed  with  laughter :  his  uncle  was  raising  him  as 
a  thoroughbred  colt.  He  approved  of  the  train 
ing,  but  somehow  he  did  not  feel  complimented  by 
the  classification.  Fred  would  have  to  hear  that 
— that  he  was  being  trained  as  for  a  race-course. 

The  next  morning  he  was  sitting  in  church; 
and  the  minister  read  the  Commandments. 


138         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Hitherto  he  had  always  listened  to  them  as 
the  whole  congregation  apparently  listened  :  as 
to  a  noise  from  the  pulpit  that  drew  near,  lasted 
for  a  while,  and  then  rumbled  on — without  being 
meant  for  any  one.  But  this  morning  he  scruti 
nized  each  Commandment  with  new  thoughtful- 
ness  —  and  with  a  new  resentfulness  also ;  and 
when  a  certain  one  was  reached  he  made  a 
discovery  that  it  applied  to  men  only:  "Thou 
shalt  not  covet  thy  neighbor's  wife.'7 

Why  should  not  wives  be  commanded  not  to 
covet  their  neighbors'  husbands  ?  he  wondered. 
Why  was  the  other  half  of  the  Commandment 
suppressed  ?  Moses  must  have  been  a  very 
polite  man  !  Perhaps  there  was  more  involved 
than  courtesy :  otherwise  he  might  have  found 
life  more  tolerable  among  the  Egyptians :  he 
might  have  been  forced  to  make  the  return  trip 
across  the  Red  Sea  when  the  waters  were  incon 
veniently  deep.  Those  Jewesses  of  the  Wander 
ing  might  have  seen  to  it  that  he  was  not  to 
have  the  pleasure  of  dying  so  mysteriously  on 
Nebo's  lonely  mountain :  his  sepulchre  would 
have  been  marked  —  and  well  marked. 

He  sat  there  in  the  corner  of  the  church,  and 
plied  his  insolent  satire.  Fred  Ousley  must  hear 
about  the  second  discovery  also  —  the  Com 
mandment  for  men  only. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE   YEARS  139 

Then  three  years  passed  and  he  was  eighteen; 
and  from  fifteen  to  eighteen  is  a  long  time  hi 
youth's  life;  things  are  much  worse  or  things 
are  much  better. 

It  was  one  rainy  September  night  after  sup 
per,  and  he  and  his  uncle  were  sitting  on  opposite 
sides  of  the  deep  fireplace. 

Some  logs  blazed  comfortably,  and  awoke  hi 
both  man  and  youth  the  thoughtfulness  which 
lays  such  a  silence  upon  us  with  the  kindling 
of  the  earliest  Autumn  fires.  Talk  between 
them  was  never  forced.  It  came,  it  went :  they 
were  at  perfect  ease  with  one  another  in  then1 
comradeship.  The  man's  long  thoughts  went 
backward ;  the  youth's  long  thoughts  went  for 
ward.  The  man  was  smoking,  at  intervals 
serenely  drawing  his  amber-hued  meerschaum 
from  under  his  thick  mustache.  The  youth 
was  not  smoking  —  he  was  waiting  to  be  a  man. 
Once  his  uncle  had  remarked:  " Tobacco  is 
for  men  if  they  wish  tobacco,  and  for  pioneer  old 
ladies  if  they  must  have  their  pipes.  Begin  to 
smoke  after  you  are  a  man,  Downs.  Cigars  for 
boys  are  as  bad  as  cigars  would  be  for  old  ladies." 

The  way  in  which  this  had  been  put  rather 
captured  the  youth's  fancy :  he  was  determined 
to  have  every  inward  and  outward  sign  of  being 
a  man  :  now  he  was  waiting  for  the  cigar. 


140         THE   DOCTOR'S   CHRISTMAS  EVE 

He  had  been  hunting  with  Fred  Ousley  that 
afternoon,  and  just  before  dark  had  come  in 
with  a  good  bag  of  birds.  A  drizzle  of  rain  had 
overtaken  him  in  the  fields  and  dampened  his 
clothing.  The  truth  is  that  he  and  Ousley  had 
lingered  over  their  good-by;  Fred  was  off  for 
college.  Supper  was  over  when  he  reached  the 
house,  and  he  had  merely  washed  his  hands  and 
gone  in  to  supper  as  he  was,  eating  alone ;  and 
now  as  he  sat  gazing  into  the  fire,  his  boots  and 
his  hunting-trousers  and  his  dark  blue  flannel 
shirt  began  to  steam.  He  was  too  much  a 
youth  to  mind  wet  garments. 

The  man  on  the  opposite  side  sent  secret 
glances  across  at  him :  they  were  full  of  pride, 
of  a  man's  idolatry  of  a  scion  of  his  own  blood. 
He  was  thinking  of  the  blood  of  that  family  — 
blood  never  to  be  forced  or  hurried :  death 
rather  than  being  commanded :  rage  at  being 
ordered  :  mingled  of  Scotch  and  Irish  and  Anglo- 
Saxon  —  with  the  Kentucky  wildness  and  inso 
lence  added.  Blood  that  often  wallowed  in  the 
old  mires  of  humanity ;  then  later  in  life  by  a 
process  of  unfolding  began  to  set  its  course 
toward  the  virtues  of  the  world  and  ultimately 
stood  where  it  filled  lower  men  with  awe. 

September  was  the  month  for  the  opening  of 
schools  and  colleges.  The  boy's  education  had 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS       141 

been  difficult  and  desultory.  First  he  had  gone 
to  the  neighborhood  school,  then  to  a  boys' 
select  school,  then  to  a  military  school,  then  to 
a  college.  Usually  he  quit  and  came  home.  Once 
he  had  joined  his  uncle  in  another  State  at  the 
Autumn  meeting  of  a  racing  association  —  had 
merely  walked  up  to  him  on  the  grounds,  eating 
purple  grapes  out  of  a  paper  bag  and  with 
his  linen  trousers  pockets  bulging  with  ripe 
peaches. 

"Well,  Downs,"  his  uncle  observed  by  way  of 
greeting  him,  as  though  he  had  reappeared  round 
a  corner. 

"Who  won  the  last  race?/'  inquired  the  boy  as 
though  he  had  been  absent  ten  minutes. 

Now  out  of  the  silence  of  the  rainy  September 
night  and  out  of  the  thoughtfulness  of  the  fire, 
the  imperious  splendid  dark  glowing  young 
animal  steaming  in  his  boots  and  flannel  sud 
denly  looked  across  and  spoke  :  — 

"  If  I  am  ever  going  to  do  anything,  it  is  about 
time  I  began." 

The  philosopher  on  the  other  side  of  the  fire 
grew  wary ;  he  had  given  the  blood  time,  and 
now  the  blood  was  mounting  to  the  brain. 

"It  is  time,  if  you  think  it  is  time." 

"One  thing  I  am  not  going  to  do,"  said  the 
arbiter  of  his  fate,  as  if  he  were  drawing  a  sur- 


142         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

prise  from  the  depths  of  his  nature  and  were 
offering  it  to  his  uncle;  if  possible,  without 
discourtesy,  but  certainly  without  discussion  — 
"one  thing  I  am  not  going  to  do;  I  am  not 
going  to  breed  horses." 

The  fire  crackled,  and  no  other  sound  dis 
turbed  the  stillness. 

"Some  one  else  will  breed  them,"  replied  the 
vicar  of  the  stables,  with  quietness :  the  sun 
always  seemed  to  remain  on  his  face  after  it  had 
gone  down.  "They  will  be  bred  by  some  one 
else.  The  breeding  of  horses  in  the  world  will 
not  be  stopped  because  some  one  does  not  wish 
to  breed  them.  It  will  come  to  the  same  thing 
in  the  end.  Even  if  it  does  not  come  to  the 
same  thing,  it  will  come  to  something  different. 
No  matter,  either  way." 

The  young  hunter  had  unbuttoned  one  of  his 
shirt  sleeves  and  bared  his  arm  above  the  elbow ; 
and  he  now  stroked  his  forearm  as  he  bent  it 
backward  over  the  biceps  and  suddenly  struck 
out  at  the  air  as  though  he  would  knock  the  head 
off  of  an  idea. 

"My  notion  is  this:  I  don't  want  to  stand 
still  and  let  my  horse  do  the  running.  If  I  have 
a  horse,  I  want  it  to  stand  still  and  let  me  do 
the  running.  If  there  is  any  excitement  for 
either  of  us,  I  want  the  excitement.  I  don't  care 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      143 

to  own  an  animal  that  wins  a  race :  I  want 
to  be  the  animal  that  wins  a  race." 

1  i  Then  be  the  animal  that  wins  the  race  ! 
The  horse  will  win  his  races :  he  will  take  care 
of  himself  :  win  your  race." 

"I  intend  to  win  my  race." 

There  was  silence  for  a  while. 

"As  it  is  not  to  be  horses,  then,  I  have  been 
thinking  of  other  things  I  might  do." 

"Keep  on  thinking." 

"You  might  help  me  to  think." 

"I  am  ready  to  think  with  you ;  you  can  only 
think  for  yourself." 

"What  about  going  into  the  army?" 

"You  just  said  you  wanted  excitement. 
There  is  no  excitement  in  the  army  unless  there  is 
war.  We  have  just  passed  through  one  war,  and 
I  don't  think  either  of  us  will  live  to  see  another. 
Still,  if  you  wish,  I  can  get  you  to  West  Point. 
Or,  if  you  prefer  the  navy,  I  can  get  you  to 
Annapolis." 

"No  Annapolis  for  me!  I  wouldn't  live  on 
anything  that  I  couldn't  walk  about  on  and  sit 
down  on  and  roll  over  on.  No  water  for  me. 
I'll  take  land  all  round  me  in  every  direction. 
I  guess  I'll  leave  the  sea  to  the  Apostle  Peter. 
Life  on  land  and  death  on  land  for  me.  Hard 
showers  and  streams  and  ponds  and  springs  — 


144         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

that  will  do  for  water.  No  Annapolis,  thank 
you!" 

"  West  Point,  then." 

"If  I  went  into  the  army,  wouldn't  I  have  to 
leave  the  farm  here  ?  " 

"  You'd  have  to  leave  the  farm  here  unless 
the  Government  would  quarter  some  troops  here 
for  your  accommodation.  In  case  of  war,  you 
might  arrange  with  the  enemy  to  come  to 
Kentucky  and  attack  you  where  you  would  be 
comfortable." 

The  future  officer  of  his  country  did  not  smile 
at  this  :  his  manner  seemed  to  indicate  that  such 
a  concession  might  not  be  so  absurd.  He  did 
not  budge  from  his  position :  — 

"I'd  rather  do  something  that  would  let  me 
live  here." 

"You  could  live  here  and  study  law :  some  of 
the  greatest  members  of  the  Kentucky  bar  have 
been  farmers.  You  could  live  here  and  practise 
law  in  the  country  seat." 

"Suppose  I  studied  law  and  then  some  day  I 
were  called  to  the  Supreme  Bench :  wouldn't 
that  take  me  away  ?  " 

"It  might  take  you  away  unless  the  Supreme 
Court  would  get  down  from  its  Bench  and  come 
and  sit  on  your  bench  —  always  to  accommo 
date  you." 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      145 

"I  don't  know  about  law :  I'll  have  to  think : 
law  does  make  you  think  !  " 

" There  is  the  pulpit:  some  of  the  greatest 
Kentucky  divines  have  been  bluegrass  farmers 

—  though  I've  always  wished  that  they  wouldn't 
call  themselves  divines.     It's  more  than  Christ 
did!" 

"The  pulpit!  And  then  all  my  life  I'd  be 
thinking  of  other  people's  faults  and  failings. 
A  fine  time  I'd  have,  trying  to  chase  my  friends 
to  hell." 

The  next  suggestion  followed  in  due  order. 

"There's  Oratory;  some  of  the  great  Ken 
tucky  orators  have  been  bluegrass  farmers. 
There  is  Southern  Oratory." 

"Oratory  —  where  would  I  get  my  gas  ?  " 

"Manufacture  it.  It  always  has  to  be 
manufactured.  The  consumer  always  manu 
factures." 

"If  I  went  in  for  oratory,  you  know  I'd  come 
out  in  Congress ;  you  know  they  always  do : 
then  no  farm  for  me  again." 

"That  is,  unless  —  you  know,  Congress  might 
adjourn  and  hold  its  sessions  —  that  same  idea 

—  to  accommodate  you  —  ! " 

"I'd  like  to  be  a  soldier  and  I'd  like  to  be  a 
farmer,  if  I  could  get  the  two  professions  to 
gether." 

L 


146         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"They  went  together  regularly  in  pioneer 
Kentucky.  The  soldiers  were  farmers  and  the 
farmers  were  soldiers." 

"And  then  if  I  could  be  a  doctor.  That's 
what  I'd  like  best.  To  be  a  soldier  and  a  farmer 
and  a  doctor." 

"Men  were  all  three  in  pioneer  Kentucky. 
During  the  period  of  Indian  wars  the  Kentucky 
farmer  and  soldier,  who  was  the  border  scout, 
was  also  sometimes  the  scout  of  J^sculapius." 

"^Esculapius  —  who  was  he?  Trotter,  run 
ner,  or  pacer  ?  " 

"He  set  the  pace:  you  might  call  him  a 
pacer." 

What  a  sense  of  deep  peace  and  security  and 
privacy  there  was  in  the  two  being  thus  free  to 
talk  together  of  life  and  the  world  —  in  that 
womanless  house !  No  woman  sitting  beside 
the  fire  to  interject  herself  and  pull  things  her 
way ;  or  to  sit  by  without  a  sign  —  and  pull 
things  her  way  afterwards  —  without  a  sign. 

The  physical  comfort  of  the  night,  and  the 
rain,  and  the  snug  hearth  awoke  a  desire  for 
more  confidences. 

"Tell  me  about  the  medical  schools  when  you 
were  a  student.  Not  about  the  professors.  I 
don't  want  to  hear  anything  about  the  pro- 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      147 

fessors.  You  wouldn't  know  anything  about 
them,  anyhow  :  no  student  ever  does.  But  what 
were  the  students  up  to  among  themselves  at 
nights  ?  The  wild  ones.  I  don't  want  to  hear 
anything  about  the  goody-goody  ones.  Tell  me 
about  the  devils  —  the  worst  of  the  devils." 

The  medical  schools  of  those  days,  as  members 
of  the  profession  yet  living  can  testify  if  they 
would,  had  their  stories  of  student  life  that 
make  good  stories  when  recited  around  the 
fireside  with  September  rain  on  the  roof.  The 
former  graduate  and  non-practitioner  was  not 
averse  seemingly  to  reminiscence.  Forthwith  he 
entered  upon  some  chronicles  and  pursued  them 
with  that  soft,  level  voice  of  either  betting  with 
you  or  baptizing  you  —  the  voice  of  gambling 
in  this  world  or  of  gambling  for  the  next. 

As  the  recitals  wound  along  their  channels, 
the  listener's  enthusiasm  became  stirred :  by 
degrees  it  took  on  a  kindling  that  was  like  a  wild 
leaping  flame  of  joy. 

"But  there  always  has  to  be  a  leader,"  he 
said,  as  though  forecasting  for  himself  a  place 
of  such  splendid  prominence.  "There  has  to  be 
a  leader,  a  head." 

"I  was  the  head." 

The  young  hunter  on  the  opposite  side  of  the 
fireplace  suddenly  threw  up  his  arms  and  rolled 


148         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

out  of  his  chair  and  lay  on  the  floor  as  though  he 
had  received  a  charge  of  buckshot  in  one  ear. 
At  last,  gathering  himself  up  on  the  floor,  he 
gazed  at  the  tranquil  amber  pipe  and  tranquil 
piper :  — 

"You!" 

There  was  a  mild  wave  of  the  hand  by  the 
historian  of  the  night,  much  as  one  puts  aside  a 
faded  wreath,  deprecating  being  crowned  with  it 
a  second  time. 

"  Another  shock  like  that  — !"  and  the 
searcher  for  a  profession  climbed  with  difficulty 
into  his  chair  again.  For  a  while  there  was 
satisfied  silence,  and  now  things  took  on  a  graver 
character :  — 

"  Somehow  I  feel,"  said  the  younger  of  the 
men,  "that  there  have  been  great  men  all  about 
here.  I  don't  see  any  now ;  but  I  have  a  feel 
ing  that  they  have  been  here  —  great  men.  I 
feel  them  behind  me  —  all  kinds  of  great  men. 
It  is  like  the  licks  where  we  now  find  the  foot 
prints  and  the  bones  of  big  game,  larger  animals 
that  have  vanished.  There  are  the  bones  of 
greater  men  in  Kentucky :  I  feel  then1  lives 
behind  me." 

"They  are  behind  you:  the  earth  is  rank 
with  them.  You  need  not  look  anywhere  else 
for  examples.  I  don't  know  how  far  you  got  in 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      149 

your  Homer  at  school  before  you  were  tired  of 
it ;  but  there  is  the  Iliad  of  Kentucky :  I  am 
glad  you  have  begun  to  read  that ! " 

The  rain  on  the  shingles  and  in  the  gutters 
began  to  sound  like  music.  The  two  men  alone 
there  in  their  talk  about  life,  not  a  woman  near, 
a  kind  of  ragged  sublimity. 

"  To  be  a  soldier  and  to  be  a  farmer  —  if  I  could 
get  those  two  professions  together,"  persisted  the 
youth. 

"In  tunes  of  peace  there  is  only  one  profession 
that  furnishes  the  active  soldier :  and  that  is  the 
profession  of  medicine.  It  is  the  physician  and 
the  surgeon  that  the  military  virtues  rest  on ; 
and  the  martial  traits  when  there  is  no  war.  It 
is  these  men  that  bring  those  virtues  and  those 
traits  undiminished  from  one  war  to  the  next 
war.  There  is  no  kind  of  manhood  in  the 
soldier,  the  fighting  man,  that  is  not  in  the  fight 
ing  physician  and  fighting  surgeon  —  fighting 
against  disease.  There  is  nothing  that  has  to  be 
changed  in  these  two  when  war  breaks  out  or 
when  peace  comes :  then-  constant  service  fits 
them  for  either.  In  times  of  peace  the  only 
warlike  type  of  man  actively  engaged  in  human 
life  is  the  doctor  and  surgeon.  Did  you  ever 
think  of  that  ?  "  said  the  older  man,  persuasively. 

The  silence  in  the  room  grew  deeper. 


150         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"Tell  me  about  the  professions  in  the  War: 
what  did  they  do  about  it ;  how  did  they  act  ?  " 

"The  professions  divided:  some  going  with. 
North,  some  going  with  South ;  fighting  on  each 
side,  fighting  one  another.  The  ministry  divid 
ing  most  bitterly  and  sending  up  their  prayers 
on  each  side  for  the  destruction  of  the  other — to 
the  same  God.  All  except  one  :  the  profession  of 
medicine  remained  indivisible.  For  that  is  the 
profession  which  has  but  a  single  ideal,  a  single 
duty,  a  single  work,  and  but  one  patient — Man." 

The  silence  had  become  too  deep  for  words. 

The  young  hunter  quietly  got  up  and  lit  his 
candle  and  squared  himself  in  the  middle  of  the 
floor,  pale  with  the  sacred  fire  of  a  youth's  ideal. 

"I  am  going  to  be  a  Kentucky  country  doctor. 
Good  night ! "  He  strode  heavily  out  of  the 
room,  and  his  stride  on  the  stairway  sounded 
like  an  upward  march  toward  future  glory. 

The  man  at  the  fire  listened.  Usually  when 
the  youth  had  reached  his  room  above  and  set 
his  candle  on  his  stand  beside  his  bed,  he  un 
dressed  there  as  with  one  double  motion  of 
shucking  an  ear  of  corn :  half  to  right  and  half 
to  left ;  and  then  the  ear  stood  forth  bared  in  its 
glistening  whiteness  and  rounded  out  to  perfect 
form  with  clean  vitality.  But  now  for  a  long 
time  he  heard  a  walking  back  and  forth, 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      151 

a  solemn  tread :  life's  march  had  begun  in 
earnest. 

He  rose  from  his  chair  and  tapped  the  ash  out 
of  his  meerschaum.  Through  force  of  habit  and 
old  association  with  the  race-course  he  looked  at 
his  timepiece. 

"I  win  that  race  in  good  time,"  he  said. 
"That  colt  was  hard  to  manage,  obstreperous 
and  balky." 

It  had  always  been  his  secret  wish  that  his 
nephew  would  enter  the  profession  that  he  him 
self  had  spurned.  Perhaps  no  man  ever  ceases 
to  have  some  fondness  for  the  profession  he  has 
declined,  as  perhaps  a  woman  will  to  the  last 
send  some  kind  thoughts  toward  the  man  she 
has  rejected. 

After  winning  a  race,  he  always  poured  out  a 
libation ;  and  he  went  to  his  sideboard  now  and 
poured  out  a  libation  sixteen  years  old. 

And  he  did  not  pour  it  on  the  ground. 

And  now  eight  years  followed,  during  which 
the  youth  Downs  Birney  became  young  Dr. 
Birney  —  a  very  great  stage  of  actual  progress. 
Seven  away  from  Kentucky,  and  one  there 
since  his  return.  Of  those  seven,  five  in  New 
York  for  a  degree ;  and  two  in  Europe  —  in 
Berlin,  in  Vienna  —  for  more  lectures,  more 


152         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

hospital  work,  another  degree.  At  the  end  of 
the  second  he  returned  incredibly  developed  to 
Kentucky,  to  the  manor  house  and  the  stock 
farm ;  and  to  the  uncle  to  whom  these  years  had 
furnished  abundance  of  means  whereby  to  get 
the  best  of  all  that  was  wisely  to  be  gotten : 
an  affectionate  abundance,  no  overfond  super 
abundance,  no  sentimentality :  merely  a  quiet 
Kentucky  sun  throwing  the  energy  of  its  rays 
along  that  young  life-track  —  hanging  out  a 
purse  of  gold  at  each  quarter-stretch,  to  be 
snatched  as  the  thoroughbred  passed. 

A  return  home  then  to  a  neighborhood  of 
kinships  and  friendships  and  to  the  uphill  work 
which  could  so  easily  become  downhill  sliding 
—  the  practice  of  medicine  among  a  people 
where  during  these  absences  he  had  been  remem 
bered,  if  remembered  at  all,  as  the  wildest 
youth  in  the  country.  When  it  had  been 
learned  what  profession  he  had  chosen,  the  pre 
diction  had  been  made  that  within  a  year 
Downs  would  reduce  the  mortality  of  the 
neighborhood  to  normal  —  one  to  every  in 
habitant  ! 

But  at  the  end  of  this  first  year  of  under 
taking  to  convert  ridicule  into  acceptance  of 
himself  as  a  stable  health  officer  and  confiden 
tial  health  guardian,  he  was  able  to  say  that 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      153 

he  had  made  a  good  start :  neighbors  have 
long  memories  about  a  budding  physician's  first 
cases  —  when  he  fails.  Young  Dr.  Birney  had 
not  failed,  because  none  of  his  cases  had  been 
important :  when  there  was  danger,  it  was 
considered  safe  to  avoid  the  doctor :  the  only 
way  in  which  he  could  have  lost  a  patient 
would  have  been  to  murder  one !  Thus  he 
had  entered  auspiciously  upon  the  long  art  and 
science  of  securing  patients.  But  he  had  secured 
no  wife  !  And  he  greatly  preferred  one  impos 
sible  wife  to  all  possible  patients.  That  problem 
meantime  had  been  pressing  him  sorely. 

The  womanless  house  in  which  he  had  been 
reared  and  his  boyhood  on  a  stock  farm  had 
rendered  him  rather  shy  of  girls  and  kept  him 
much  apart  from  the  society  of  the  neighbor 
hood.  Nevertheless  even  in  Europe  before  his 
return  —  with  the  certainty  of  marriage  before 
him  —  he  had  recalled  two  or  three  juvenile  per 
turbations,  and  he  had  resolved  upon  arrival  to 
follow  these  clues  and  ascertain  what  changes 
seven  years  had  wrought  in  them.  There  was 
no  difficulty  in  following  the  clues  a  few  weeks 
after  getting  back  to  Kentucky :  they  led  in 
each  case  to  the  door  of  a  growing  young  family  : 
and  out  of  these  households  he  thereupon  began 
to  receive  calls  for  his  services  to  sick  children : 


154         THE  DOCTOR'S   CHRISTMAS  EVE 

all  the  perturbations  had  become  volcanoes, 
and  were  now  on  their  way  to  become  extinct 
craters. 

So  he  was  clueless.  He  must  make  his  own 
clues  and  then  follow.  Nor  could  there  be  any 
dallying,  since  he  could  not  hope  to  succeed  in 
his  profession  as  a  young  unmarried  physician : 
thus  pressure  from  without  equalled  pressure 
from  within. 

Moreover,  he  was  pleasantly  conscious  of 
a  general  commotion  of  part  of  the  population 
toward  him  with  reference  to  life's  romance. 
The  girls  of  that  race  and  land  were  much  too 
healthy  and  normally  imaginative  not  to  feel 
the  impact  of  the  arrival  of  a  young  doctor  — 
who  was  going  to  ask  one  of  them  to  marry  him. 
As  to  those  seven  years  of  his  in  New  York  and 
Europe,  he  could  discover  only  one  mind  in 
them:  they  deplored  his  absence  not  because 
they  had  missed  him,  but  because  he  had  missed 
them:  it  was  no  gain  to  have  been  in  New  York 
and  Berlin  and  Vienna  if  you  lost  Kentucky ! 
He  gradually  acquired  the  feeling  that  if  in 
addition  to  the  misfortune  of  having  been  ab 
sent  for  several  years,  the  calamity  had  been 
his  of  having  been  born  abroad,  it  would  not 
have  been  permitted  him  to  plough  corn. 

But  while  they  could  not  abet  him  in  the 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      155 

error  of  thinking  that  he  had  returned  a  cos 
mopolitan,  bringing  high  prestige,  instantly 
they  showed  general  excitement  that  he  —  one 
of  themselves  —  was  at  home  again  in  search 
of  a  wife.  He  had  arrived  like  a  starving  bee 
released  in  a  ripe  vineyard;  and  for  a  while 
he  could  only  whirl  about,  distracted  by  in 
decision  as  to  what  cluster  of  grapes  he  should 
settle  on :  not  that  the  grapes  did  not  have 
something  to  say  as  to  the  privilege  of  alight 
ing.  After  the  bee  had  selected  the  bunch,  the 
bunch  selected  the  bee.  A  vineyard  ripe  to  be 
gathered  —  and  being  gathered  !  Every  month 
or  so  a  vine  disappeared  —  claimed  for  Love's 
vintage  —  stored  away  in  Love's  cellar. 

They  were  everywhere  !  As  he  drove  widely 
about  the  country,  the  two  most  abundant 
characteristics  seemed  to  be  unequalled  grass 
and  marriageable  girls.  He  met  them  on  turn 
pikes  and  lanes  —  in  leafy  woods  at  picnics  — 
at  moonlight  dances  —  on  velvet  lawns  —  amid 
the  roses  of  old  gardens  —  and  he  began  hu 
morously  to  count  those  who  looked  available. 
One  passed  him  on  the  road  one  day,  and,  lifting 
a  corner  of  the  buggy  curtain,  she  peeped  back 
at  him:  "She  will  do!"  he  said.  Another 
swept  past  him  on  horseback  and  looked  in  the 
opposite  direction.  "She  will  do!"  he  said. 


156         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

He  met  two  on  a  shady  street  of  a  quiet  town  un 
der  their  peach-blow  parasols  :  "  They  will  do  ! " 
he  said.  He  saw  four  on  a  lawn  playing  tennis, 
and  watched  their  vital  abandon  and  tasted 
their  cup  :  "They  will  do  !"  he  said.  He  swept 
his  eyes  over  a  ball-room  one  night:  "They 
will  all  do!"  he  said,  and  made  an  end  of 
counting. 

Into  this  world  of  romance  and  bride-seeking 
the  doctor  launched  himself  formally  under 
brilliant  auspices  of  earth  and  sky  and  people 
one  beautiful  afternoon  of  early  summer:  it 
was  on  the  grounds  of  one  of  the  finest  old 
country  places  at  a  lawn  party  with  tennis 
matches.  It  was  his  first  appearance  as  a  candi 
date  for  life's  greater  game.  A  large  gallery  of 
onlookers,  seated  along  a  trellis  of  vines  and 
roses,  measured  him  critically  as  he  stepped  out 
on  the  court :  he  knew  it  and  he  challenged  the 
criticism.  In  his  white  flannels ;  his  big  bared 
head  covered  with  curling  black  hair;  his  neck 
half  bare  in  its  virile  strength ;  his  big  grayish 
blue  eyes  flashing  with  glorious  health,  full  of 
good  humor  and  of  deeper  warmth;  his  big 
half-bared  arms  strong  to  hold  in  love  or  to  lift 
in  pain ;  the  big  stub  nose  of  tenacity ;  the  big 
red  mouth  that  laughing  revealed  the  big  thick 
white  teeth,  good  to  tear  and  grind  their  way : 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      157 

his  twenty-six  years  of  native  Kentucky  in 
solence  capped  with  a  consciousness  of  travel 
and  knowledge  of  his  own  authority  and  power 

—  youthful   white  soldier   of   the  clean,  —  the 
neighborhood's  evangelist  of  life  and  death,  - 
he  looked  like  a  good  partner  for  the  afternoon 
or    for    life.     One    girl,    seeing    all    this  —  and 
more  —  repeated  to  herself,  she  did  not  know 
why,  Blake's  poem  on  the  Tiger. 

His  partner  that  afternoon  was  his  hostess 

—  a  Kentucky  girl  just  home  from  her  North 
ern  college  as  a  graduate.     She  too  had  been 
away  for  several  years;    and  they  had  this  in 
common   as   the   first   bond  —  that   they  had 
arrived  as  comparative  strangers  and  saw  their 
home    surroundings    from    the    outside :     they 
spoke  of  it :   it  introduced  them. 

There  was  tension  in  the  play  for  this  reason  ; 
and  for  others :  this  first  public  appearance 
with  so  much  going  on  in  imagination  and 
sympathy.  Too  great  tension  developed  as  the 
battle  of  the  racquets  went  on :  so  that  the 
doctor's  partner,  overreaching  and  twisting, 
sprained  an  ankle,  and  the  games  ended  for 
them  :  she  was  assisted  upstairs,  and  he  applied 
his  skill  and  his  treatment. 

As  he  drove  home  he  thought  a  good  deal  of 
his  partner :  of  her  proud  reserve  toward  him 


158         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

out  of  the  game  and  of  her  inseparable  blend 
ing  of  herself  with  him  in  the  game ;  her  devo 
tion  to  their  common  cause ;  her  will  not  that 
she  should  win  but  that  both  should  win;  her 
unruffled  ignoring  of  a  bad  play  of  his  or  a  bad 
play  of  her  own;  the  freshened  energy  of  her 
attack  after  a  reverse ;  her  matter-of-course 
pleasure  when  he  played  well  or  when  she 
played  well;  the  complete  surrender  of  herself 
to  him  for  the  game  —  after  which  instantly 
there  was  nothing  between  them  except  the 
courtesy  of  a  hostess.  He  thought  of  these 
traits.  And  then  he  recalled  her  fortitude  dur 
ing  the  acute  suffering  with  that  twisted  ankle  ! 
How  contemptuously  she  had  borne  pain  ! 

"That  little  foot,"  he  said,  moved  to  admira 
tion,  "that  little  foot  makes  the  true  foot 
print  of  the  greater  vanished  people  !  She  is 
of  the  blood  of  male  and  female  heroes :  she 
knows  how  to  do  and  she  knows  how  to  suffer ! 
Now  if  I  fall  in  love  with  her  — !"  and  there 
surged  through  him  the  invitation  to  do  so. 

But  at  the  end  of  his  first  year  the  doctor 
felt  that  he  had  made  only  a  general  advance 
toward  the  long  battle-line  of  Love;  he  had 
reconnoitred,  but  he  had  not  attacked ;  he  had 
a  vast  marital  receptivity  embracing  many 
square  miles.  He  had  slid  his  hands  along  the 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      159 

nuptial  rope,  but  he  could  not  as  yet  discover 
who  was  waiting  beside  the  bridal  knot. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  were  two  or  three 
cases  of  wounded  on  the  other  side ;  and  if  one 
could  have  been  privileged  to  stand  near,  it 
would  have  been  possible  to  see  Love's  am 
bulances  secretly  and  mournfully  moving  here 
and  there  to  the  rear.  If  as  much  as  this 
could  not  be  said  for  him,  what  right  would 
he  have  had  to  be  practising  there  —  or  to  be 
alive  anywhere  ! 

And  now  the  winter  of  that  first  year  had  come  : 
it  brought  an  immense  stride  —  in  Progress. 

It  was  the  twenty-fourth  of  December. 
Darkness  was  beginning  to  fall  on  road  and 
woods  and  fields ;  and  he  was  driving  rapidly 
home  because  he  was  tired  and  ravenous  and 
because  he  was  thinking  of  his  supper  —  always 
that  good  Kentucky  supper.  But  to-night  he 
would  have  to  eat  solitary  because  some  days 
previous  his  uncle  had  gone  to  New  York  — 
gone  in  his  quiet  way :  announcing  the  fact  one 
morning  and  stopping  there  —  his  reasons  were 
his  own. 

About  a  mile  from  home  the  doctor's  horse, 
rushing  on  through  the  gathering  Christmas 
twilight,  began  to  overtake  a  vehicle  moving  at 


160         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

a  stately  pace  as  though  its  mission  involved 
affairs  too  elaborate  for  haste.  As  he  ap 
proached  from  the  rear  he  recognized  that  it 
was  Frederick  Ousley's  carriage,  returning  from 
his  afternoon  wedding  several  miles  across  the 
country. 

He  had  never  met  the  girl  that  his  friend  was 
to  marry :  her  home  was  in  another  neighbor 
hood,  and  the  demands  of  this  first  year  upon 
him  had  been  too  many.  He  had  not  even  had 
time  to  go  to  the  wedding.  Now  he  checked 
his  horse  in  order  not  to  pass  the  carriage,  and 
at  a  respectful  distance  of  a  few  yards  constituted 
himself  its  happy  procession.  At  the  front  gate 
it  turned  in  and  rolled  through  the  woods  to  the 
house,  the  windows  of  which  were  blazing  with 
candles  —  bridal  lights  and  the  lights  of  Christ 
mas  Eve  !  He  stopped  at  the  gate  and  followed 
the  progress  of  it  as  it  intercepted  the  lights  now 
of  one  window  and  now  of  another  as  it  wound 
along  the  drive.  Leaning  forward  with  his 
forearms  on  his  knees  and  peering  from  the 
side-curtain,  he  saw  the  front  doors  thrown  open, 
or  knew  this  by  the  flood  of  radiance  that  issued 
from  the  hall;  saw  the  young  master  of  the 
house  walk  to  the  top  step  of  his  porch  and  there 
turn  and  wait  to  receive  his  bride  —  in  true 
poetic  and  royal  and  manly  fashion :  wishing 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      161 

her  to  come  to  him  as  he  faced  her  on  his 
threshold;  he  saw  arms  outstretched  toward 
her,  saw  her  mount  falteringly  and  give  her 
hands ;  and  saw  them  walk  side  by  side  into  the 
hall :  the  servants  closed  in  upon  them,  the 
doors  closed  upon  the  servants. 

Christmas  Eve  —  Night  of  Nativity  —  Home 
—  Youth  —  Love  —  Firelight  and  Darkness  — 
One  another ! 

As  the  doctor  watched,  that  vision  sank  into 
him  as  an  arrow  which  had  been  shot  into  the 
air  years  before  and  had  now  hit  its  mark.  He 
straightened  himself  abruptly  and  gave  the 
rein  to  his  horse  with  a  feeling  that  the  shaft 
stuck  in  its  wound.  Then  with  a  vigorous 
shake  of  his  head  he  said  to  himself :  — 

"Dr.  Birney,  there  is  a  young  man  in  this 
buggy  who  needs  your  best  attention :  see  that 
he  gets  it  and  gets  it  quickly. " 

He  found  his  supper  awaiting  him :  and 
some  intelligence  which  drove  appetite  away 
and  drove  him  away,  leaving  the  supper  un 
eaten  :  it  was  a  letter  from  his  uncle  —  one  of 
those  tranquil  letters  :  - 

"They  think  they  will  have  to  perform  an 
operation  on  me,  but  I  want  your  opinion  first. 
I  trust  your  judgment  beyond  that  of  any  of 
them,  old  and  experienced  as  they  are :  and  I 


162         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

should  have  sought  your  judgment  before  com 
ing  away  if  I  could  have  felt  sure  that  it  would 
be  needed :  unless  it  were  needed,  I  did  not 
wish  you  to  know.  You  had  better  start  with 
out  losing  very  much  time.  They  seem  to  re 
gard  the  case  as  urgent  and  uncertain. 

"If  anything  should  happen  before  you  are 
able  to  reach  me,  these  few  words  will  be  my 
last. 

"You  have  long  since  entered,  Downs,  into 
possession  of  part  of  what  you  will  inherit 
from  me :  and  that  is  your  acquaintance  with 
the  imperfections  of  my  character  and  the 
frailties  of  my  life.  There  has  been  much  in  it 
that  even  a  worse  man  might  regret,  but  noth 
ing  of  which  any  better  man  could  be  ashamed. 
You  have  always  guarded  this  part  of  your 
inheritance  as  your  sacred  private  personal 
property.  My  request  is  that  you  will  here 
after  make  as  little  account  of  it  as  possible; 
I  hope  you  will  never  be  tempted  to  draw  upon 
it  as  a  valuable  fund;  and  as  early  as  time 
permits,  put  the  memory  of  it  away  to  gather 
its  oblivion  and  its  dust. 

"You  will  find  that  everything  of  value  I 
possess  has  been  left  to  you.  You  think  I 
have  loved  horses;  I  have  loved  nothing  but 
you.  I  have  loved  you  because  you  were 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      163 

worthy  of  it ;  but  I  should  have  loved  you  if 
you  had  not  been  worthy.  The  horses  meant 
a  good  deal  to  me  in  lif e,  but  they  mean  nothing 
in  death. 

"I  believe  you  will  be  one  more  great  Ken 
tucky  country  doctor.  And  whatever  race  you 
may  have  to  run  in  this  world,  whether  you 
win  or  whether  you  lose,  I  know  it  will  be  a  hard, 
a  gallant,  struggle :  that  is  all  the  thoroughbred 
can  ever  do.  Having  delivered  over  to  you 
everything  I  own  and  retaining  only  the  things 
I  cannot  will  away,  —  my  judgment,  my  con 
fidence  in  you,  and  my  devotion  to  you,  —  I 
wager  these  that  you  will  win  life's  race  and 
win  it  gloriously.  My  last  bet  —  with  my  last 
com  —  you  will  win  ! 

"If  this  is  good-by  —  good-by." 

It  was  several  weeks  before  he  returned, 
bringing  with  him  all  that  was  earthly  of  one 
whose  races  were  over  and  who  himself  had  just 
been  entered  for  the  unknown  stake  of  the  Great 
Futurity. 

Now  February  had  reappeared,  and  with  it 
came  another  stage  of  Progress.  When  he 
entered  the  breakfast  room  one  morning  — 
always  to  a  hearty  breakfast  —  he  went  first  to 
the  windows  and  looked  out  at  the  low  dark 


164         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

clouds  shrouding  the  sky  and  the  rapidly 
whitening  earth :  it  was  snowing  heavily.  As 
he  turned  within,  the  bleakness  out  of  doors 
brightened  the  fire  and  added  its  comfort  to  the 
breakfast  table.  While  he  was  pouring  out  his 
coffee,  suddenly  through  one  window  an  object 
appeared;  and  looking  out,  he  saw  Frederick 
Ousley  on  horseback  at  the  foot  of  the  pave 
ment  :  he  was  but  half  seen,  laughing  and 
beckoning  amid  the  thickly  falling  flakes. 

The  doctor  rushed  out  to  the  porch,  and  young 
Ousley  spurred  his  horse  up  to  the  side  of  it, 
riding  over  flower-beds,  trampling  and  ruining 
plants  that  happened  not  now  to  be  in  bloom. 
The  two  friends  after  a  long  crushing  grip  poured 
out  their  friendship  with  eye  and  speech,  greet 
ing  and  laughter. 

Two  products  of  that  land.  With  much  in 
sympathy,  with  no  outward  resemblance :  one 
of  little  mingled  Anglo-Saxon  blood :  the  other 
of  Scotch-Irish  Anglo-Saxon  strains  which  have 
created  so  much  history  wherever  they  have 
made  their  mortal  fight.  The  young  Kentucky 
Anglo-Saxon  on  his  horse,  blond-haired,  blue- 
eyed,  with  heavy  body  and  heavy  limbs,  a 
superb  animal  to  begin  with,  wheresoever  and 
in  whatsoever  the  animal  might  end :  the  snow 
on  the  edges  of  his  yellowish  hair  and  close- 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      165 

clipped  beard ;  around  his  neck,  just  visible 
inside  his  upturned  coat  collar,  a  light  blue 
scarf,  a  woman's  scarf,  tied  there  as  he  had 
started  by  tender  fingers  that  had  perhaps 
craved  the  mere  touching  of  his  flesh :  the 
scarf,  as  it  were,  of  Lohengrin  blue;  for  there 
was  something  so  knightly  about  him,  he 
radiated  such  a  passion  of  clean  young  man 
hood,  that  you  all  but  thought  of  him  as  a 
Kentucky  Lohengrin  —  whom  no  Elsa  had 
questioned  too  closely,  and  for  whom  there 
would  never  be  a  barren  return  to  Montserrat. 

Facing  him,  the  young  Kentucky  Scotch- 
Irish  Anglo-Saxon,  physical  equal,  physical 
opposite :  dark  and  swarthy  soldier  of  the 
South :  as  he  stood  there  giving  you  no  notion 
that  for  him  waited  the  crimson-dyed  cup  of 
Life's  tragic  brew,  topped  at  this  moment  with 
the  white  dancing  foam  of  youth  and  happiness. 

They  talked  rapidly  of  many  things.  Then 
the  object  of  the  visit  was  disclosed  —  with  an 
altered  voice  and  manner :  — 

"As  soon  as  you  have  had  breakfast,  Downs, 
I  wish  you  would  come  over.  Mrs.  Ousley  is 
not  very  well.  She  would  like  to  see  you." 

Then  he  added  with  affectionate  seriousness : 
"I  have  told  her  about  you:  how  we  have 
known  each  other  all  our  lives,  have  played 


166         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

together,  hunted  together,  slept  together, 
travelled  together,  studied  together.  She  knows 
all  about  you  !  I  have  prepared  the  way  for 
you  to  be  her  physician.  There  was  a  great 
difficulty  there  —  that  question  of  her  physi 
cian  :  you  will  know  that,  when  you  know 
her!" 

A  new  look  had  come  into  his  eyes :  he 
stood  as  on  the  peak  of  experience  —  the  true 
mountain-top  of  the  life  of  this  world. 

"I  will  come  at  once." 

Young  Ousley,  with  a  sudden  impulse,  per 
haps  to  conceal  his  own  sacred  emotion,  rode 
over  to  a  window  of  the  breakfast  room  and 
peered  in  at  the  waiting  table  with  its  solitary 
chair  at  the  head.  He  raised  his  voice  as 
though  speaking  to  an  imaginary  person  inside : 

"How  do  you  do,  Mrs.  Birney?"  he  said. 
" Could  I  speak  to  the  doctor  a  moment?  I 
should  like  to  have  his  private  ear  profession 
ally  :  could  you  pass  one  of  his  ears  out  ?" 

The  doctor  stooped  and  scraped  together  a 
snowball  from  the  edge  of  the  porch,  and  with 
a  soft  toss  hit  him  in  the  face :  — 

"Take  that  for  speaking  to  Mrs.  Birney 
through  a  window !  And  Mrs.  Birney  is  not 
my  office  boy.  And  I  do  the  passing  out  of  my 
own  ears  —  to  any  desired  distance." 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      167 

The  young  husband  rode  back  to  the  porch, 
wiping  the  snow  out  of  his  laughing  eyes :  they 
looked  blue  as  with  the  clear  laughter  of  the  sky. 

"That  will  never  do  !"  he  said  with  a  back 
ward  motion  of  his  head  toward  the  solitary 
chair  at  the  breakfast-table.  "What  right  have 
you  to  defraud  a  girl  out  of  all  that  happiness  ?" 

"I  am  not  defrauding  a  girl  out  of  all  that 
happiness :  I  am  being  defrauded.  I  am  not 
the  culprit:  I  am  the  victim.  As  a  consequence 
of  trying  to  save  the  lives  of  other  husbands, 
I  have  nearly  come  to  my  own  death  as  a 
bachelor  :  I  have  about  succumbed  to  inanition : 
I  am  a  mere  Hamlet  of  soliloquy  —  and  ab 
stention.  " 

It  was  the  last  playfulness  of  boyhood  friend 
ship,  of  a  return  to  old  ways  of  jesting  when 
jesting  meant  nothing.  But  the  glance  into 
the  breakfast  room  —  those  rallying  words  — 
the  return  of  the  snowball  into  the  face  —  were 
the  ending  of  a  past :  each  felt  that  this  was 
enough  of  it. 

As  young  Ousley  rode  away,  he  wheeled  his 
horse  at  the  distance  of  some  yards  and  called 
back  formally :  - 

"Mrs.  Ousley  would  like  to  see  you  as  soon 
as  you  can  come,  doctor/' 

It  was  a  professional  command. 


168         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"I'll  come  immediately  after  breakfast." 

"Thank  you." 

"Thank  yw,!" 

They  had  assumed  another  relation  in  life : 
on  one  side  of  a  chasm  was  a  young  husband 
with  his  bride;  on  the  other,  the  family  phy 
sician. 

As  Dr.  Birney  poured  out  his  coffee  and 
buttered  his  biscuit,  he  said  to  himself  that  now 
the  bread  of  life  was  being  buttered. 

When  he  reached  the  Ousleys',  the^  youthful 
husband  met  him  on  the  veranda  and  threw  an 
arm  around  his  shoulder  affectionately  and  led 
him  in;  and  when  some  time  later  they  re 
appeared,  both  talked  gravely  and  parted, 
bound  by  a  new  bond  of  dependence  and  help 
fulness  between  man  and  man. 

For  the  next  few  days  there  developed  in 
Dr.  Birney  a  novel  consciousness  that  his  in 
terest  in  marriage  had  enormously  deepened, 
but  that  interest  in  his  own  marriage  had 
received  a  setback :  the  feeling  was  genuine, 
and  it  troubled  him.  The  tentative  advances 
into  social  life  that  he  had  been  making  seemed 
to  have  ended  in  blind  paths ;  the  growing  ties 
snapped  like  threads  upon  which  some  dis 
placed  weight  has  fallen. 

What  he  had  been  looking  for  it  seemed  to 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      169 

him  that  he  had  found  too  late  in  Josephine 
Ousley.  Had  he  found  her  before  her  mar 
riage,  he  would  have  looked  at  no  other,  nor 
have  wavered  a  year.  The  actual  significance 
of  this  was  that  he  had  encountered  one  of  the 
persistent  dreams  of  mankind  —  the  dream  of 
ideal  love  and  ideal  marriage  with  one  who  is 
unattainable. 

The  history  of  the  race,  of  its  art,  of  its  litera 
ture,  has  borne  through  ages  testimony  to  the 
vividness  and  to  the  tyranny  of  this  obsession, 
this  mistake,  or  this  truth  which  may  be  one 
of  Nature's  deepest.  For  it  may  be  error  and 
it  may  be  truth,  or  sometimes  the  one  and 
sometimes  the  other.  It  may  be  one  of  the 
vast  forces  in  Nature  which  we  are  but  now 
beginning  to  observe  —  one  of  her  instincts  of 
intuitive  selection  which  announces  itself  in 
stantly  and  is  never  to  be  reversed :  such  an 
instinct  as  governs  the  mating  of  other  lives 
not  human.  But  there  it  is  in  our  own  species 
for  us  to  make  out  of  it  what  we  can.  There 
are  men  who  for  the  rest  of  their  lives  look 
back  upon  the  mere  sight  of  some  woman,  a 
solitary  brief  meeting  with  her,  as  though  that 
were  their  natural  and  perfect  union.  There 
are  women  who  are  haunted  by  the  same  in 
fluence  and  allegiance  to  some  man  —  seen 


170         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

once  —  perhaps  never  seen  at  all  except  in  a 
picture.  Among  the  dreams  of  humanity  about 
ideal  strength,  ideal  wisdom,  ideal  justice  and 
charity  and  friendship,  this  must  be  set  apart 
as  its  dream  of  ideal  love ;  and  as  all  high  and 
beautiful  dreams  about  human  nature  are  wel 
come,  provided  only  we  never  awaken  from 
them,  let  those  who  dream  thus  dream  on. 
But  the  tragedy  of  it  falls  upon  those  who  in 
actual  life  practically  supplant  the  imagined. 
Let  Petrarch  dream  of  Laura,  let  Dante  dream 
of  Beatrice,  if  only  the  perfections  of  Laura  and 
Beatrice  do  not  come  into  judgment  against 
the  actual  wives  of  Petrarchs  and  Dantes. 
Let  the  ideal  love  of  Romeo  and  Juliet  gladden 
mankind  only  as  a  dream  of  the  unfulfilled. 

Dr.  Birney  had  fallen  under  the  influence  of 
this  error,  or  this  truth :  the  bride  of  his  friend 
instantly  filled  his  imagination  as  that  vision 
of  perfection  which  dreams  alone  bring  to  visit 
us.  He  was  not  yet  in  love  with  her,  not  a 
feeling  of  his  nature  had  yet  made  its  start 
towards  her :  but  she  had  declared  herself  as  for 
him  the  ideal  woman  —  ensphered  in  the  un 
attainable.  As  proof  of  this  she  released  in  him 
from  the  hour  of  his  meeting  her  finer  things 
than  he  had  been  aware  of  in  his  own  nature: 
her  countenance,  her  form,  her  voice,  her  whole 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      171 

presence,  her  spirit,  disclosed  for  him  for  the  first 
time  the  whole  glory  and  splendor  of  human  life 
and  of  a  man's  union  with  a  woman. 

As  he  tried  to  withdraw  his  mind  from  this 
belief  and  fix  it  upon  his  own  separate  future, 
he  discovered  that  his  outlook  was  no  longer 
single  nor  clear.  Something  stood  in  his  path 
—  an  irremovable  obstacle.  Sometimes  in  sleep 
we  try  to  drive  around  an  obstruction  in  our 
road,  and  as  often  as  we  drive  around  it  it  re 
appears  where  it  was  before:  such  an  obstruc 
tion  had  obtruded  itself  across  his  progress. 

During  the  following  weeks  he  was  often  at 
the  Ousleys'  -  -  to  supper,  as  a  guest  in  their 
carriage  on  visits  and  to  parties  :  the  three  were 
almost  inseparable.  One  night  at  supper  young 
Ousley  again  brought  up  the  subject  of  the 
doctor's  marriage  and  twitted  him  for  hesitancy  : 
unexpectedly  the  subject  was  thrust  back  into 
the  speaker's  teeth :  there  was  an  awkward 
silence  —  very  curious  — 

And  now  there  befell  the  doctor  one  of  those 
peculiar  little  progressions  or  retrogressions 
which  prove  a  man  not  to  be  utterly  forlorn. 
He  had  ceased  to  make  social  calls,  and  had 
begun  to  decline  invitations;  and  so  into  the 
air  there  was  wafted  that  little  myth  which 


172         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

went  wandering  over  the  country  from  house 
to  house :  the  familiar  little  myth  that  he  had 
been  rejected.  This  myth  of  the  rejected  !  — 
this  little  death-web  wound  about  the  unsuc 
cessful  suitor :  every  eligible  man  is  as  much 
entitled  to  one  as  every  caterpillar  to  his  cocoon. 

He  was  with  Mrs.  Ousley  when  her  child 
was  born  —  he  saved  her  life  and  the  child's 
life  and  his  friend's  happiness.  And  in  re 
sponse  he  found  that  both  of  them  were  now 
drawing  him  into  that  closer  friendship  which 
rests  upon  danger  shared  and  passed  —  upon 
respect  and  power. 

The  first  day  that  Mrs.  Ousley  sat  in  her 
drawing-room  with  her  infant  across  her  knees 
the  doctor  was  there ;  and  as  he  studied  the 
perfect  group  —  husband  and  wife  and  child  — 
it  seemed  to  him  that  behind  them  should 
have  shone  the  full-orbed  golden  splendor  of 
this  life's  ideal  happiness. 

"There  is  only  one  way  out  of  it  for  me," 
he  muttered  bitterly  as  he  went  down  the  steps. 
"I  must  marry  and  fall  in  love  with  my  own 
wife  and  with  the  mother  of  my  own  children." 

That  afternoon  he  drove  toward  the  stately 
homestead  of  the  summer  lawns  and  tennis 
matches  —  but  when  he  reached  the  front  gate, 
he  drove  past. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS       173 

It  was  a  few  months  after  this,  toward  the 
end  of  a  long  conversation  with  Mrs.  Ousley,  in 
which  she  now  broached  with  feminine  tact  and 
urgency  the  subject  of  his  marriage,  it  was  as  he 
told  her  good-by  that  there  escaped  from  him 
the  first  intimation  of  his  love  —  unexpectedly 
as  an  electric  spark  flashing  across  a  vacuum. 

When  he  was  miles  away  he  said  to  himself : 

"This  must  stop  —  this  must  be  stopped: 
if  I  cannot  stop  it,  some  one  else  must  help 
me  to  stop  it." 

That  afternoon  he  began  again  his  visits  to 
the  stately  homestead  of  the  lawns  and  the 
tennis  courts;  and  a  month  or  two  later  he 
drove  by  and  said  to  Mrs.  Ousley :  — 

"I  am  engaged  to  be  married." 

She  gave  him  a  quick  startled  look,  thinking 
not  of  him,  but  with  a  woman's  intuitive  fore 
cast  sending  her  sympathy  and  apprehension 
on  into  the  life  of  another  woman. 

One  beautiful  summer  night  of  the  year  fol 
lowing  there  were  bridal  lights  gleaming  far 
and  wide  over  the  grounds  of  this  stately  coun 
try  place  and  from  all  the  windows  of  the  house. 

The  doctor  was  married. 

About  a  year  later  there  reached  Dr.  Birney 
one  morning  a  piece  of  evidence  as  to  how  his 


174         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

reputation  was  spreading :  from  another  neigh 
borhood  a  farmer  of  small  means  rode  to  his 
door  and  besought  him  to  come  and  see  a 
member  of  his  family :  this  request  implied 
that  the  regular  family  physician  had  been 
passed  over,  supplanted ;  and  when  the  poor 
turn  against  then:  physicians  and  discharge 
them,  it  is  a  bad  sign  indeed  —  for  the  physi 
cians. 

The  doctor  upon  setting  out  sent  his  thoughts 
to  this  professional  brother  who  had  been  dis 
credited  :  he  would  gladly  have  saved  him 
from  the  wound. 

A  few  miles  up  the  pike  he  was  surprised  to 
meet  a  well-known  physician  from  the  city : 
they  knew  each  other  socially  and  checked  their 
horses  to  exchange  greetings. 

Dr.  Birney  lost  no  time  in  saying :  — 

"If  you  are  on  the  way  to  my  house,  I'll 
turn  back." 

"I'm  going  to  the  Ousleys'.  Professor  Ousley 
asked  me  yesterday  to  come  out  and  see  Mrs. 
Ousley :  he  said  it  was  her  wish." 

The  two  physicians  quickly  parted  with 
embarrassment. 

As  Dr.  Birney  drove  on  he  had  received  the 
wound  which  sometimes  leaves  a  physician  with 
the  feeling  that  he  has  tasted  the  bitterness  of 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      175 

his  own  death :  he  himself  had  been  pushed 
aside  —  discarded  from  the  household  that 
meant  most  to  him  as  physician  and  man. 

He  pulled  his  horse's  head  into  a  dirt  road 
and  crossed  to  another  turnpike  and  visited  his 
new  patient  and  went  on  to  another  county  seat 
and  put  up  his  horse  at  a  livery  stable  to  be 
groomed  and  fed  and  took  his  dinner  at  the 
little  tavern  and  wandered  aimlessly  about  the 
town  and  started  back  towards  sundown  and 
reached  home  late  in  the  night  and  went  to 
his  rooms  without  awaking  his  wife.  As  he 
lighted  his  lamp  in  the  library  under  its  rays 
he  saw  a  note  from  Mrs.  Ousley  to  them,  ask 
ing  their  company  to  supper  next  evening. 
His  wife  had  pencilled  across  the  top  of  the 
page  a  message  that  she  would  not  go. 

"It  is  their  good-by  to  me,"  he  said;  "when 
my  wife  knows  that  they  have  discharged  me, 
as  a  woman  understands  another  woman  hi 
such  a  matter,  she  will  know  the  reason;  and 
she  will  see  fully  at  last  what  she  began  to  see 
long  since." 

When  he  went  to  the  Ousleys',  Mrs.  Ousley 
came  forward  to  greet  him  at  the  side  of  her 
husband,  and  she  gave  him  both  hands.  And 
she  did  what  she  had  never  done  before  —  she 
tried  with  her  little  hands  to  take  his  big  ones  — 


176         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  hands  that  had  saved  her  life;  and  out  of 
the  intensity  and  solemnity  of  her  gratitude  she 
looked  him  in  the  eyes  until  the  lids  fell  over 
hers.  It  was  like  saying :  — 

It  is  not  your  fault,  it  is  not  my  fault,  it  is  not 
the  fault  of  any  of  us :  it  is  life  and  the  fault 
of  life.  As  I  let  you  go,  dear  friend,  I  cling  to 
you. 

When  the  evening  was  over  and  the  moment 
had  come  to  leave,  she  was  at  the  side  of  her 
husband  again ;  and  under  the  chandelier  in 
the  hall  she  suddenly  looked  up  to  it  with  a 
beautiful  mystical  rapture  and  consecration  — 
as  if  to  the  mistletoe  of  her  bridal  eve. 

And  now  more  years  —  years  —  years  !  But 
what  effect  have  years  upon  the  master  passions  ? 
What  are  five  years  to  a  master  Hatred  ?  What 
are  ten  years  to  Revenge  ?  What  are  twenty 
to  Malice  ?  What  is  half  a  century  to  Patience, 
or  fourscore  years  to  Loyalty,  or  fourscore  and 
ten  to  Friendship,  or  the  last  stretch  of  mortality 
to  waiting  Love  ?  The  noble  passions  grow  in 
nobility ;  the  ignoble  ones  grow  in  ignominy. 

And  thus  it  came  about  that  the  final 
stage  of  the  doctor's  Progress  attained  dimen 
sions  large  enough  to  contain  Hogarth's  most 
human  four:  for  it  represented  that  Progress 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      177 

of  the  Rake  which  sometimes  in  everyday  reality 
coincides  with  the  Progress  of  the  Harlot  and  with 
the  Progress  of  Marriage  a  la  Mode  and  with  the 
Progress  of  Cruelty:  so  that  he  thus  achieved 
as  much  by  way  of  getting  on  as  may  be  reason 
ably  demanded  of  any  plodding  man. 

It  was  an  August  day  in  this  same  year  which 
was  now  closing  its  record  with  the  thoughtful 
days  of  December.  It  was  afternoon,  and  it 
was  Saturday. 

Intervening  years  had  developed  the  doctor 
in  two  phases  of  growth :  he  looked  no  older, 
but  he  was  heavier  in  trunk  and  limbs;  and 
he  was  weightier  in  repute,  for  he  had  estab 
lished  far  and  near  his  fame  as  a  physician. 
He  had  patients  in  remote  county  seats  now, 
and  on  this  day  he  had  been  to  one  of  those 
county  seats  to  visit  a  patient,  and  had  found 
him  mending.  As  he  quitted  the  house  with 
this  responsibility  dropped,  it  further  reminded 
him  that  within  the  range  of  his  practice  he  had 
not  for  the  moment  a  single  case  of  critical 
illness  or  of  any  great  suffering.  Whereupon 
he  experienced  the  relief,  the  elastic  rebound, 
known  perhaps  only  to  physicians  when  for  a 
term  they  may  take  up  relations  of  entire  health 
and  happiness  with  their  fellow-beings :  and 


178         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

when  you  cease  to  deal  with  pain,  you  begin  to 
deal  with  pleasure. 

With  a  new  buoyancy  of  foot  and  feeling  he 
started  down  to  Cheapside,  the  gathering-place 
for  farmers  and  merchants  and  friendly  town 
folk  —  most  of  all  on  Saturdays.  As  he 
strolled  along,  the  recollection  wandered  back 
to  him  of  how  in  years  gone  by  —  when  he 
was  just  old  enough  to  begin  to  shave  —  it 
was  the  excitement  of  the  week  to  shave  and 
take  his  bath  and  don  his  best  and  come  to 
town  to  enjoy  Saturday  afternoon  on  Cheap- 
side.  The  spirit  of  boyhood  flowed  back  to 
him :  he  bathed  in  a  tide  of  warm  mysterious 
waters. 

When  he  reached  the  public  square,  he  began 
to  shake  hands  and  rub  shoulders ;  and  to  nod 
at  more  distant  acquaintances ;  and  once  under 
the  awning  of  a  store  for  agricultural  imple 
ments  he  paused  squarely  before  a  group  of 
farmers  sitting  about  on  ploughs  and  harrows. 
They  were  all  friends,  and  at  the  sight  of  him 
they  rose  in  a  group,  seized  him  and  marched 
him  off  with  them  to  the  hotel  to  dinner  whither 
they  were  just  starting.  They  were  hearty 
men ;  it  was  a  hearty  meal ;  there  was  hearty 
talk,  hearty  laughter.  Middle-aged,  red- 
blooded  men  of  overflowing  vitality,  open- 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      179 

faced,  sunbrowned;  eating  meat  like  self- 
unconscious  carnivora  and  drinking  water  like 
cattle :  premium  animals  in  prime  condition 
and  ready  for  action :  on  each  should  have 
been  tied  the  blue  ribbon  of  agricultural  fairs. 

The  hotel  dinner  was  unusually  rich  that 
day  because  a  great  circus  and  menagerie  had 
pitched  its  tents  in  a  vacant  lot  on  the  edge  of 
town;  and  there  was  to  be  an  afternoon  and 
an  evening  performance,  and  the*  town  was 
crowded. 

The  doctor's  dinner  companions  were  to  join 
their  wives  and  children  at  the  grounds,  and 
very  reluctantly  he  declined  their  urging  to  go 
along :  as  they  separated,  there  rose  in  him 
fresh  temptation  about  old  Saturday  afternoon 
liberties  and  pleasures  —  and  there  fell  upon 
him  as  a  blight  the  desolation  of  his  own  home 
life. 

He  made  his  way  through  excited  throngs  to 
the  livery  stable,  and  had  soon  started.  On  the 
way  across  town,  above  low  roofs  and  fences, 
he  caught  sight  of  weather-stained  canvas  tents, 
every  approach  toward  which  now  had  its  roll 
ing  tide  of  happy  faces,  young  and  aged.  At  a 
cross  street  the  hurrying  people  flowed  so 
thoughtlessly  about  his  buggy  wheels  that  he 
checked  his  horse  lest  some  too  careless  child 


180         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

might  be  trodden  on;  and  as  he  sat  there, 
smiling  out  at  them  and  waiting  for  them  to 
pass,  suddenly  above  the  tumult  of  voices  with 
their  brotherliness  he  heard  a  sound  that  made 
him  forget  his  surroundings  —  forget  human 
kinship  —  and  think  only  of  another  kinship 
of  his  to  something  secret  and  undeclared :  in 
one  of  the  tents  a  great  lonely  beast  lifted  its 
voice  and  roared  out  its  deep  jungle-cry.  The 
primitive  music  rang  above  the  civilized  swarm 
like  a  battle-challenge  uttered  from  the  heart  of 
Nature  —  that  sad  long  trumpet  call  of  instinct 
—  caged  and  defrauded ;  a  majestic  despair  for 
things  within  that  could  never  change  and  for 
things  without  that  were  never  to  be  enjoyed. 
Shallow  and  pitiable  by  comparison  sounded  the 
human  voices  about  the  buggy  wheels. 

"To  make  one  outcry  like  that!  —  sincere, 
free!  But  to  be  heard  once  —  but  to  be  under 
stood  at  last ! "  said  the  doctor. 

When  he  reached  the  outskirts  of  the  town, 
he  met  vehicles  hurrying  in  from  the  neighbor 
hood  and  from  far  beyond  it. 

It  was  not  long  before  he  saw  his  own  carriage 
approaching ;  and  his  children,  recognizing  him, 
sprang  to  their  feet  and  waved  tumultuously. 
As  the  vehicles  drew  alongside,  he  looked  at 
them  rather  absent-mindedly :  — 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      181 

" Where  are  you  running  off  to?"  he  asked, 
pretending  not  to  remember  that  permission 
had  been  granted  weeks  before,  as  soon  as  the 
bills  had  been  pasted  on  turnpike  fences. 

"We're  running  off  to  the  circus!" 

"And  what  can  you  possibly  be  going  to  do 
at  the  circus  ?  Children  go  to  a  circus  —  who 
ever  heard  of  such  a  thing !  I  should  think 
you'd  have  stayed  at  home  and  studied  arithmetic 
or  memorized  the  capitals  of  all  the  States." 

"Well,  as  for  me,"  cried  Elsie,  "I'm  pleased 
to  explain  what  I  shall  do  :  I  shall  drink  lemon 
ade  and  sit  with  the  fat  woman  if  there's  room 
for  both  of  us  on  the  same  plank  ! " 

"And  what  are  you  going  to  do?" 

"I'm  going  to  do  everything,  of  course  !  That's 
my  ticket :  I  don't  pay  for  all  and  see  some ! 
I'm  going  to  do  everything." 

"Everything   is   a  good    deal,"    commented 
the  doctor  introspectively.     "Everything  is  a 
good  deal ;   but  do  what  you  can  toward  it  - 
as  you  have  paid  the  price." 

For  a  while  he  mused  how  childhood  wants 
all  of  whatever  it  craves :  its  desire  is  as  single 
as  its  eye.  Only  later  in  life  we  come  to  know 
—  or  had  better  know  —  that  we  may  have  the 
whole  of  very  little :  that  a  small  part  of  any 
thing  is  our  wisest  portion,  and  the  instant  any- 


182         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

thing  becomes  entirely  ours,  it  becomes  lost  to 
us  or  we  become  lost  to  it :  the  bright  worlds 
that  last  for  ages  revolve  —  they  do  not  collide. 

He  was  still  thinking  of  this  when  he  met  the 
carriage  of  Professor  Ousley;  and  the  two 
middle-aged  friends,  who  in  their  lives  had 
never  passed  each  other  on  the  road  without 
stopping,  stopped  now.  Professor  Ousley  got 
out  and  came  across  to  the  doctor's  buggy  and 
greeted  him  with  fresh  concerned  cordiality. 

"It  has  come  at  last/' he  announced,  as  though 
something  long  talked  of  between  them  could 
be  thus  referred  to ;  and  he  drew  out  a  letter 
which  he  handed  in  to  be  read ;  it  was  a  call  to 
a  professorship  in  a  Northern  university.  As 
the  doctor  read  it  and  reread  it  (continuing  to 
read  because  he  did  not  know  what  to  say)  — 
as  he  thus  read,  he  began  to  look  like  a  man 
grown  ill. 

"You  have  accepted,  of  course,"  he  said 
barely. 

"I  have  accepted." 

The  friends  were  silent  with  their  faces  turned 
in  the  same  direction  across  the  country  — 
their  land,  the  land  of  generations  of  their  people. 
This  breaking  up  would  be  the  end  for  them  of 
the  near  tie  of  soil  and  tradition  and  boyhood 
friendship  and  the  friendship  of  manhood. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      183 

"Well,"  said  the  doctor  unsteadily,  "this  is 
what  you  have  been  working  for." 

"This  is  what  I  have  been  working  for," 
assented  Professor  Ousley. 

These  intermediate  years  had  wrought  their 
changes  in  him  also ;  within  and  without ; 
he  was  grown  heavy,  and  as  an  American  scholar 
he  had  weight.  The  doctor  clung  for  safety 
to  his  one  theme :  — 

"You  have  outgrown  your  place  here  in  Ken 
tucky.  A  larger  world  has  heard  of  you  and 
sends  for  you  because  it  needs  you.  Well 
done  !  But  when  I  became  a  Kentucky  country 
doctor,  it  was  for  life.  No  greater  world  for 
me  !  My  only  future  is  to  try  to  do  better  the 
same  work  hi  the  same  place  —  always  better 
and  better  if  possible  till  it  is  over.  You  climb 
your  mountain  range ;  I  stay  in  my  valley." 

Professor  Ousley  drew  out  another  envelope : 

"Read  that,"  he  said  a  little  sadly,  and  sad 
ness  was  rare  with  him :  it  was  an  advertise 
ment  for  the  town  paper  announcing  for  sale 
his  house  and  farm. 

"It  is  the  beginning  of  the  end,"  he  said. 
"It  is  our  farewell  to  Kentucky,  to  you,  to  our 
past,  but  not,  I  hope,  to  our  future.  Herbert 
and  Elizabeth  will  have  to  be  looked  out  for 
in  the  future :  Elizabeth  may  refuse  to  leave 


184         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  neighborhood,  who  knows?"  He  laughed 
with  fatherly  fondness  and  gentleness. 

The  doctor  laughed  with  him :  that  plight 
ing  of  their  children ! 

At  this  moment  a  spring  wagon  came  hasten 
ing  on :  it  was  the  servants  of  the  Ousley 
household. 

"So  you  have  left  your  mistress  by  herself/' 
the  master  called  out  to  them  as  they  passed. 
They  replied  with  their  bashful  hilarity  that 
she  herself  had  sent  them  away,  that  she  was 
glad  to  be  well  rid  of  them.  As  the  wagon 
regained  the  middle  of  the  road  and  disap 
peared,  Professor  Ousley  looked  at  the  doctor 
with  a  meaning  that  may  have  been  deeper 
than  his  smile : — 

"She  sent  us  away,  too  —  rne  and  the  chil 
dren.  She  wanted  the  day  to  herself.  Of 
course  this  change,  the  going  away,  the  wrench 
ing  loose  from  memories  of  life  in  the  house 
there  since  our  marriage  —  of  course,  all  that 
no  other  one  of  us  can  feel  as  she  feels  it.  My 
work  marches  away,  I  follow  my  work,  she 
follows  me,  the  children  follow  her.  Duty 
heads  the  procession.  It  pulls  us  all  up  by 
the  roots  and  drags  us  in  the  train  of  service : 
we  are  all  servants,  work  is  lord.  I  under 
stood  her  to-day  —  I  was  glad  to  bring  the 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      185 

children  and  to  be  absent  from  her  myself: 
these  hours  of  looking  backward  and  of  looking 
forward  are  sacred  to  her  —  it  is  her  woman's 
right  to  be  alone."  He  drew  the  doctor  into 
these  confidences  as  one  not  outside  ultimate 
sacred  things.  The  doctor  made  no  reply. 

He  drove  on  now,  not  aware  how  he  drove. 
A  few  more  vehicles  passed,  and  then  a  mile  or 
two  farther  out  no  more :  they  had  ceased  to 
come :  he  was  entering  the  silent  open  country. 

A  Kentucky  landscape  of  August  afternoon 

—  Saturday    afternoon !    The    stillness !    The 
dumb  pathos  of  garnered  fields  —  that    spec 
tacle  of  the  great  earth  dutiful  to  its  trust  and 
now    discharged    of    obligation !    That    acute 
pang   of  seeing  with  what   loyalty  the  vows 
of  the  year  have  been  kept  by  soil  and  sun, 
and  are  ended  and  are  now  no  more  !    The 
first  intimations  also  of  changes  soon  to  come 

—  the  chill  of  early  autumn  nights  when  the 
moon  rises  on  the  white  frost  of  fences  and 
stubble,  and    when    outside    windows  glowing 
with  kindled  hearths  the  last  roses  freeze.     Of 
all  seasons,  of  all  the  days  with  which  nature 
can  torture  us,  none  so  wound  without  striking ; 
none    awaken    such    pain,    such    longing:     all 
desire  offers  itself  to  be  harvested. 

There  was  no  glare  of  sunlight  this  after- 


186         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

noon,  nor  any  shape  of  cloud,  but  a  haze  which 
took  away  shadows  from  fences  and  bushes 
and  wayside  trees  and  weeds,  and  left  the 
earth  and  things  on  it  in  a  radiance  between 
light  and  shadow  —  between  day  and  darkness. 
It  was  a  troubled  brooding :  and  when  the  sur 
faces  are  quiet,  then  begins  the  calling  of  the 
deeps  to  the  deeps. 

As  the  doctor  advanced  into  this  stillness  of 
tha  land,  there  reached  his  ear,  as  one  last 
reverberation,  that  long  lonely  roar  of  the 
great  animal  homesick  and  life-sick  for  jungle 
and  jungle  freedom;  for  the  right  to  be  what 
nature  had  made  it  —  rebellious  agony  ! 

A  day  to  herself !  She  had  sent  them  all  away, 
husband,  and  children,  and  servants!  The  right 
to  be  alone  with  memories  .  .  .  under  the  still 
surface  the  invitation  of  the  deeps.  .  .  . 

Dr.  Birney's  buggy  was  nearing  the  front 
gate  of  Professor  Ousley's  farm.  When  he 
reached  it,  he  checked  his  horse  and  sat 
awhile.  Then  he  got  out  and  looked  up  the 
pike  and  down  the  pike :  it  might  have  been  an 
instinct  to  hail  any  one  passing  —  he  looked 
dazed  —  like  a  man  not  altogether  under  self- 
control.  Not  a  soul  was  in  sight. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      187 

He  drove  in. 

The  main  driveway  approached  the  house 
almost  straight;  but  a  few  yards  inside  the 
gate  there  branched  from  it  another  which  led 
toward  the  sequestered  portions  of  the  grounds. 
It  was  private  and  for  pleasure :  it  formed  a 
feature  of  the  landscape  gardening  of  earlier 
times  when  country  places  were  surrounded  by 
parklike  lawns  and  forests  and  stone  fences. 
It  skirted  the  grounds  at  a  distance  from  the 
house,  passed  completely  round  it,  and  returned 
to  the  main  driveway  at  the  point  where  it 
started.  Thus  it  lay  about  the  house  —  a 
circle. 

Slowly  the  doctor's  buggy  began  to  enclose 
the  house  within  this  circle,  this  coil,  this  arm 
creeping  around  and  enclosing  a  form. 

In  spots  along  the  drive  the  shrubbery  was 
dense,  and  forest  trees  overhung.  He  had 
scarcely  entered  it  when  a  bird  flitted  across  his 
path :  softest  of  all  creatures  that  move  on 
wings,  with  its  long  gliding  flight,  a  silken 
voluptuous  grace  of  movement  —  the  rain- 
crow.  It  flew  before  him  a  short  distance  and 
alighted  on  a  low  overhanging  bough  —  its 
breast  turned,  as  waiting  for  him.  Its  wings 
during  that  flight  resembled  the  floating  dra 
peries  of  a  woman  fleeing  with  outstretched 


188         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

arms ;  and  as  it  now  sat  quiet  and  inviting,  its 
throat  looked  like  a  soft  throat — bared. 

Once  the  doctor's  buggy  passed  a  flower-bed 
the  soil  of  which  showed  signs  of  having  been 
lately  upturned :  a  woman's  trowel  lay  on  the 
edge  of  the  sod :  some  one  had  been  working 
there;  perhaps  some  deep  restlessness  had 
ended  the  work.  Here  the  atmosphere  was 
sweet  with  rose  geranium  and  heliotrope :  it 
was  the  remotest  part  of  the  ground,  screened 
from  any  distant  view.  And  once  the  buggy 
curtains  struck  against  the  spray  of  a  rosebush 
and  the  petals  fell  on  the  empty  cushion  beside 
the  doctor  and  upon  his  knees.  The  horse 
moved  so  slowly  along  this  forest  path  of  beauty 
and  privacy  that  no  ear  could  have  heard  its 
approach  as  it  passed  round  the  house  and 
returned  to  the  main  drive.  Here  the  doctor 
sat  awhile. 

Then  he  pulled  the  head  of  the  horse  toward 
the  house. 

He  reached  the  top  of  the  drive.  At  the  end 
of  a  short  pavement  stood  the  house.  The 
front  doors  were  closed  —  not  locked.  It 
stood  there  in  the  security  of  its  land  and  of 
its  history,  and  of  traditions  and  ideals.  Unde 
fended  except  by  these :  with  faith  that  nothing 
else  could  so  well  defend. 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      189 

On  one  side  of  the  pavement  was  built  an  old- 
fashioned  ornament  of  Southern  lawns  —  a 
vine-covered,  rose-covered  summer-house  within 
which  could  be  seen  rugs  and  chairs  and  a  work- 
table  :  some  one  had  been  at  work ;  that  same 
deep  restlessness  had  perhaps  terminated  pas- 
tune  here.  Near  the  other  end  of  the  house 
two  glass  doors,  framed  like  windows,  opened 
upon  a  single  stone  step  in  the  grass ;  and  within 
these  doors  hung  a  thin  white  drapery  of  sum 
mer  curtains ;  and  under  the  festoon  of  these  cur 
tains  there  was  visible  from  the  doctor's  buggy 
half  the  still  figure  of  a  woman — reclining. 

She  had  bespoken  a  day  for  solitude.  And 
now  she  sat  there,  deep  in  the  reverie  of  the 
years. 

Surely  through  that  reverie  ran  the  memory 
of  a  Christmas  Eve  when  her  husband  had 
brought  her  home  with  him,  and,  leading  her 
to  this  same  bed-chamber,  to  a  place  under 
the  chandelier  from  which  mistletoe  hung,  had 
taken  her  in  his  arms ;  and  as  his  warm  breath 
broke  against  her  face,  his  lips,  hardly  more 
than  a  youth's  then,  had  uttered  one  haunt 
ing  phrase:  bride  of  the  mistletoe. 

Now  had  come  the  year  for  the  closing 
scene  of  youth's  romance  in  the  house  —  a 


190         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

romance  that  already  for  years  had  been  going 
its  quiet  way  to  extinction.  The  shorn  group 
of  them  were  soon  to  pass  out  of  it  into  a 
vaster  world :  the  young  lover  of  the  hearth 
had  become  the  middle-aged  lover  of  humanity. 
And  through  the  reverie  ran  thoughts  of  the 
other  man  who  had  been  near  during  all  this 
time  —  defrauded  of  her  —  his  ideal ;  baffled 
in  his  desire;  a  man  with  a  love  of  her  that 
had  been  a  long  prayer  and  a  madness :  to 
whom  she  owed  her  life :  this  other  man  to  be 
left  behind  here  amid  the  old  familiar  fields  — 
with  his  love  of  her  ruining  his  home. 

The  doctor  got  out  of  his  buggy  noiselessly. 
He  loosened  the  horse's  check-rein  without  know 
ing  what  he  did;  and  the  surprised  animal 
turned  its  head  and  touched  him  inquiringly 
in  his  side  with  its  nose.  He  thrust  his  fore 
finger  down  inside  his  collar  and  pulled  it  with 
the  gesture  of  a  man  who  felt  himself  choking. 
He  could  not  —  for  some  reason — hear  his 
own  feet  on  the  pavement  nor  on  the  steps  as 
he  mounted  the  porch.  On  one  side  in  the 
shadow  of  old  vines  stood  a  settee  with  cushions ; 
and  at  the  head  of  it  a  little  table  with  books 
opened  and  unopened :  that  same  deep  rest 
lessness  had  ended  reading.  As  he  grasped  the 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      191 

knob  of  the  bell,  it  slipped  from  his  hand  and 
there  was  a  loud  clangor. 

She  stepped  quickly  out  upon  the  stone 
before  her  door,  and  at  recognition  of  him, 
with  a  smile  and  gesture  of  welcome,  she  dis 
appeared  within.  The  next  moment  the  front 
door  was  opened  wide ;  but  at  the  sight  of  his 
face  —  with  an  instinct  perhaps  the  oldest  that 
the  race  knows  and  that  needs  never  to  be  ex 
plained  —  she  took  one  step  backward.  Then 
she  recovered  herself,  and,  unsupported,  she 
stood  there  on  the  threshold  of  her  home. 

"Water!"  His  death-white  lips  framed  the 
word  without  a  sound. 

He  watched  her  pass  quickly  down  the  hall 
till  she  disappeared.  Turning  away,  he  sat 
down  beside  the  small  table  of  books  in  the 
shadow  of  the  vines;  and  he  fixed  his  blood- 
swollen  eyes  on  the  door,  waiting  for  her  to 
return.  She  came  unwaveringly,  and  without  a 
word  placed  the  glass  of  water  beside  him,  and 
then  she  passed  out  of  sight  behind  him. 

A  long  tune  he  remained  there.  Close  to  his 
ear  out  of  the  depths  of  the  honeysuckle  came 
the  twittering  of  a  brood  of  nestlings  as  the 
mother  went  to  and  fro  —  a  late  brood,  the 
first  having  met  with  tragedy,  or  the  second 
love-mating  of  the  season. 


192         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Then  upon  the  stillness  another  sound  broke 
—  a  plain  warning  to  his  ear.  It  was  a  scrap 
ing  of  the  buggy  wheel  against  the  buggy, 
showing  that  his  horse,  finding  its  check-rein 
loosened,  but  being  too  well  trained  to  move, 
had  turned  short  to  crop  the  grass  beside  the 
driveway. 

How  the  homely  things,  the  pitiable  trifles 
reach  us  amid  life's  immensities  ! 

This  overturning  of  a  buggy !  The  over 
turning  of  lives ! 

He  started  down  the  steps,  and  then  midway 
between  the  house  and  the  buggy  he  saw  her. 

She  stood  a  few  yards  from  him  across  the 
grass  at  one  of  the  entrances  of  the  summer 
house  where  she  had  been  working  at  her 
needlework.  She  stood  there,  not  waiting  for 
him  to  come  —  but  waiting  for  him  to  go. 
For  years  he  had  followed  her  as  along  a  path  : 
this  was  the  end  of  the  path :  neither  could  go 
farther. 

And  now,  turning  at  the  end  of  the  path, 
she  meant  to  make  him  understand  —  under 
stand  her  better  and  understand  himself  better. 

And  so  she  stood  there  facing  him,  the 
whole  glowing  picture  of  her  wifehood  and 
motherhood  and  womanhood  :  not  in  fear  nor 
anger,  nor  with  any  reproach  for  him  nor  any 


THE  BOOK  OF  THE  YEARS      193 

stain  for  herself :  but  with  the  deepest  under 
standing  and  sympathy  in  a  great  tragedy  — 
and  with  her  friendship. 

Then  she  turned  away  and  with  quiet  steps 
took  a  slender  path  which  led  to  those  se 
questered  portions  of  the  grounds  where  she 
had  left  her  trowel  and  geraniums  and  helio 
tropes.  Slowly  along  this  labyrinth  of  verdure, 
under  the  branches  of  the  old  forest  trees,  she 
passed.  Now  a  shrub  partly  hid  her :  once 
the  long  bough  of  a  rose  tree  touched  her 
shoulder  and  dropped  the  petals  of  its  blossoms 
behind  her.  Farther  away,  farther  away,  then 
lost  down  the  dim  glade. 

The  buggy  crept  homeward  along  the  pike. 
The  horse  hung  its  head  low;  the  reins  lay 
on  the  dashboard;  with  its  obscure  sense  that 
something  was  wrong  it  struck  the  gait  with 
which  it  had  always  yielded  obedience  to  the 
sadnesses  of  the  land  —  and  moved  along  the 
highway  as  behind  a  death. 

Past  farms  of  happy  husbands  and  wives 
and  children  !  Past  fences  on  which,  a  bare 
headed  boy,  he  had  once  liked  to  come  out 
and  sit  and  watch  people  pass;  or  to  meet 
his  uncle  as  he  returned  home.  Past  the  little 
roadside  church,  its  doors  and  windows  so 


194         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

tightly  shut  now  during  the  week,  where  years 
before  he  had  sat  one  morning  and  had  shot 
the  arrow  of  a  boy's  satire  at  the  Command 
ment  for  men  only. 

Two  voices  for  him  that  day  —  the  same 
two  that  are  in  every  man,  the  only  two  in 
any  man :  the  cry  of  the  jungle  —  I  will  —  and 
the  voice  of  the  mountain-top  — 

Thou  Shalt  Not. 


EVERGREEN   AND   THORN   TREE 

FOUR  months  had  elapsed  since  that  August 
afternoon  of  summer  heat  and  passion  —  not 
a  lengthy  period  as  reckoned  on  the  mere  un 
emotional  calendar.  But  changes  in  our  lives 
are  not  measurable  by  days :  we  may  spend 
eventless  years  with  no  inner  or  outer  sign  of 
growth,  and  then  some  hour  may  bring  a  read 
justment,  an  advancement,  of  our  whole  being. 
The  oriental  story  of  Saul  of  Tarsus,  made  a 
changed  man  by  a  voice  or  a  vision  of  heavenly 
things,  is  human  and  natural,  and  for  this  reason 
if  for  no  other  has  been  credible  to  thousands  of 
men  —  this  reversal  of  direction  on  life's  road. 

As  Dr.  Birney  now  on  the  morning  of  this 
twenty-fourth  of  December  sat  in  his  library, 
trying  to  make  out  the  bills  of  the  year,  and 
there  lay  disclosed  before  him  the  book  of  the 
years  —  the  story  of  his  life  from  boyhood  up 
—  he  by  and  by  abandoned  the  filling  out  of 
blanks  against  his  professional  neighbors  and 

195 


196         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

began  to  cast  up  as  at  the  end  of  no  previous 
year  his  own  human  debt  to  the  better  ideals 
of  his  fellow-beings  —  and  to  himself.  And 
Nature,  who  was  grievously  in  his  debt  but  had 
no  notion  of  paying,  Nature  stood  at  his  shoul 
der  and  pressed  him  for  settlement  in  that  old 
formula  of  hers :  you  need  not  have  opened 
this  account  with  Nature,  but  since  it  has  been 
opened,  there  is  no  closing  it.  It  runs  until 
you  are  declared  bankrupt;  and  you  are  not 
bankrupt  until  you  are  dead.  Then  of  course 
as  a  business  firm  I  shall  lose  what  I  have  not 
already  collected  from  you;  but  there  are 
enough  others  to  keep  the  concern  prosperous 
and  going.  Meantime  —  make  a  partial  pay 
ment  now:  payment  in  suffering,  payment  in 
expiation,  payment  in  self -repudiation.  If  you 
have  any  funds  invested  in  a  habit  of  inferiority, 
they  are  acceptable :  I  levy  on  them. 

One  particular  fact  this  morning  had  riveted 
Dr.  Birney's  attention  upon  the  slow  inex 
orable  grinding  of  these  mills  of  life. 

For  years  the  unhappiness  of  his  domestic 
affairs  —  the  withdrawal  of  his  wife  from  him 
under  his  roof  —  had  by  insensible  stages 
travelled  as  a  story  to  all  other  homesteads  in 
that  region.  In  his  own  house  it  had  always 
remained  a  mute  tragedy :  each  of  the  two  who 


EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE         197 

bore  the  yoke  of  it  made  no  willing  sign ;  each 
turned  toward  their  world  the  unbetraying 
countenance.  And  it  must  be  remembered  that 
half  a  century  ago  and  less  you  might  have 
journeyed  inquisitively  through  the  length  and 
breadth  of  that  land  and  have  found  probably 
not  one  case  of  divorce  nor  of  separation  with 
out  divorce :  among  that  people  marriage  was 
truly  for  better  or  for  worse  —  a  great  binding 
and  unalterable  sacrament  of  blended  lives. 
If  after  marriage  love's  young  dream  ended, 
then  you  lived  on  where  you  were  —  wide 
awake;  if  all  gorgeous  colors  left  the  clouds 
and  the  clouds  left  the  sky,  you  stood  the 
blistering  sun;  if  it  turned  out  to  be  oil  and 
water  poured  together,  at  least  it  was  oil  and 
water  within  the  same  priceless  cruet :  and 
the  perpetuity  of  the  cruet  was  considered  of 
more  value  to  society  than  the  preservation  of 
a  little  oil  and  water. 

No  divorce  then  nor  separation  in  his  case; 
nor  any  voluntary  vulgarization  of  the  truth, 
and  yet  a  widely  diffused  knowledge  of  this 
truth  among  neighbors,  among  his  brother 
physicians,  hi  county  seats,  and  away  down  on 
that  lower  level  of  the  domestic  servants,  the 
proudest  experience  of  whose  lives  is  perhaps 
the  discovery  of  something  to  criticise  in  those 


198         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

far  above  them :  is  it  not  a  personal  triumph 
to  level  a  pocket  telescope  on  the  sun? 

And  all  this  Dr.  Birney  had  grown  used  to 
through  Nature's  kind  indurations  :  all  of  us 
have  to  grow  used  to  so  much;  and  perhaps 
there  is  no  surer  test  for  any  of  us  than  how 
much  we  can  bear.  But  in  one  of  life's  direc 
tions  only  —  in  the  direction  of  his  children  — 
his  outlook  had  hitherto  been  as  refreshing  to 
him  as  sunlight  on  the  young  April  verdure  of 
the  land.  In  that  direction  had  still  been  left 
him  complete  peace,  because  there  still  dwelt 
spotlessness. 

But  the  father  had  long  dreaded  the  arrival 
in  his  children  of  an  age  when  they  must  com 
mence  to  see  things  in  their  home  which  they 
could  not  understand  or  in  fairness  judge.  He 
carried  that  old  dread  felt  by  so  many  parents 
that  by  and  by  the  children  will  be  forced  to 
understand  —  and  to  misunderstand  —  the  lack 
of  something  in  the  house.  It  was  for  this 
very  reason  that  permission  had  the  more  gladly 
been  granted  them  this  year  to  celebrate  their 
Christmas  elsewhere;  for  this  festival  brings 
into  relief  as  nothing  else  the  domestic  peace 
of  a  fireside  or  the  discords  that  mar  the  lives 
of  those  gathered  in  coldness  about  its  warmth. 

And   now   the   long   expected   had   arrived. 


EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE          199 

His  conversation  with  his  little  boy  that  morn 
ing  before  the  two  children  had  darted  off  for 
their  Christmas  away  from  home  had  brought 
the  announcement :  the  boy  was  at  last  mature 
enough  to  begin  to  put  his  own  interpretation 
upon  the  estrangement  of  his  parents.  More 
over,  the  son  now  believed  that  he  had  found 
the  father  out,  had  penetrated  to  his  secret ; 
and  the  doctor  recalled  the  words  which  had 
conveyed  this  youthful  judgment  to  him:  — 

"If  I  should  get  tired  of  Elizabeth  and  wanted 
a  little  change  and  fell  in  love  with  another  man's 
wife—" 

There  was  the  snow-white  annunciation ! 
There  the  doctor  got  insight  into  the  direction 
that  a  young  life  tended  to  take !  There  was 
the  milestone  already  reached  by  the  traveller  ! 
That  is,  his  son  out  of  devotion  to  him  had 
already  entered  into  a  kind  of  partnership  hi 
his  father 's  marital  unfaithfulness.  The  boy 
had  laughed  in  his  father's  eyes  with  elation  at 
his  own  loyalty. 

These  tidings  of  degeneracy  it  was  that  so 
arrested  the  doctor  on  this  day.  The  influence 
of  the  house  had  at  last  reached  the  only  re 
maining  field  thus  far  unreached ;  and  now  the 
seeds  of  suggestion  had  been  dropped  from  one 
ripened  life  into  new  soil,  sowing  the  world's 


200         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

harvest  over  again  —  that  old,  old  harvest  — 
of  tares  and  tears.  Hitherto  his  tragedy  had 
been  communicated  to  his  own  generation; 
now  it  had  dropped  into  the  next  generation : 
it  had  been  sown  past  his  own  life  futureward. 

The  shock  of  this  discovery  had  befallen  him 
just  when  Dr.  Birney  had  begun  to  extricate 
himself  from  his  whole  past ;  when  he  had 
begun  to  hope  that  it  might  somehow  begin  to 
be  effaced,  sponged  away. 

For  although  but  four  months  had  passed 
from  that  August  afternoon  to  this  December 
morning,  a  great  change  had  been  wrought  in 
him. 

When  on  the  day  following  that  sad  August 
one  he  about  the  middle  of  the  forenoon  had 
driven  distractedly  into  Professor  Ousley's  yard, 
he  saw  that  friend  of  his  youth,  the  man  he 
loved  best  of  men,  the  most  nearly  perfect 
character  he  knew  among  men,  —  he  saw  him 
sitting  on  a  rustic  bench  under  an  old  forest 
tree  inside  his  front  gate,  —  waiting  for  him. 
Beside  him  on  the  bench  lay  papers  over  which 
he  was  working  —  not  because  he  enjoyed  work 
at  that  moment  probably,  but  because  it  was 
impossible  to  sit  there  and  wait  with  empty 
hands  —  with  his  mind  tortured  by  one  thought, 
the  sorrow  and  shame  of  this  meeting. 


EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE         201 

As  the  doctor  somehow  got  out  of  his  buggy 
and  started  across  the  grass  toward  him,  he 
did  not  look  up  because  he  could  not  look  up 
at  once ;  and  he  did  not  rise  and  come  to  meet 
him ;  it  was  impossible  —  for  a  moment.  But 
then  with  a  high  bracing  of  himself  —  he  came. 
And  coming,  he  showed  in  his  face  only  deep 
emotion,  anxiety,  distress,  such  as  a  true  man 
might  feel  for  another  true  man  who  had  been 
caught  in  one  of  life's  disasters.  As  a  friend 
might  walk  toward  a  friend  who  from  perfect 
health  had  by  some  accident  of  machinery 
tottered  to  him  mangled;  or  as  to  a  friend  of 
wealth  who  through  some  false  investment  had 
by  a  turn  of  fortune's  wheel  been  left  penni 
less;  or  as  to  a  friend  of  sound  eyesight  who 
had  suddenly  lost  the  power  of  right  vision; 
or  as  to  a  friend  who  travelling  a  straight  road 
across  a  perilous  country  had  by  some  atrophy 
or  lesion  of  the  brain  lost  his  bearings  and  was 
found  wandering  over  a  precipice. 

"How  do  you  do,  Downs?"  he  called  out, 
using  the  old  first  name  which  for  years  now 
he  had  dropped,  the  boyish  name  of  complete 
boyish  friendship.  "Come  and  sit  down,"  he 
said,  and  he  wound  his  arm  through  the  doc 
tor's  and  all  but  supported  him  until  they 
reached  the  seat  under  the  tree. 


202         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

And  then,  without  waiting  or  wavering  or 
looking  at  his  friend's  face,  most  of  all  without 
allowing  him  to  utter  a  word  (like  a  man 
aroused  to  the  battle  of  a  whole  life  which  con 
centrated  itself  then  and  there),  he  turned  to 
his  papers  and  began  to  speak  of  the  future  — 
of  the  professorship  with  its  new  work,  new 
duties,  new  services  —  to  the  going  away  from 
Kentucky :  not  once  did  he  turn  the  talk  away 
from  the  new,  the  future,  except  that  when  he 
finished  he  covered  the  whole  theme  by  saying 
that  the  old  ties  must  hold  fast  and  become 
the  dearer  for  the  separation.  He  wanted  the 
doctor's  advice,  insisted  upon  having  it,  forced 
him  too  on  into  this  future.  Not  a  word,  not 
a  look  of  the  eye,  not  a  note  in  the  voice,  about 
a  thing  so  near,  too  near. 

"Now  this  is  the  end  of  that/'  he  said,  put 
ting  the  papers  away.  "But  it  all  brings  up 
something  else :  the  farther  we  go  forward,  the 
longer  we  look  backward ;  and  the  future,  this 
new  future,  has  turned  my  eyes  all  the  more 
toward  the  past,  Downs,  our  past  —  yours 
and  mine !" 

And  so  he  began  to  talk  about  this  past. 
He  went  back  to  their  boyhood  together.  He 
laughed  over  the  time  when  he  began  to  go 
to  the  manor  house  every  Saturday  to  stay  all 


EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE         203 

night.  He  declared  that  he  had  expected  the 
first  time  to  starve  in  a  house  where  there 
were  no  women ;  but  to  his  astonishment  — 
and  relief  —  he  had  found  that  he  had  devoured 
things  as  never  before.  He  had  not  been  pre 
pared  to  say  —  speaking  for  the  boy  he  then 
was  —  that  a  woman  at  the  table  took  away 
his  appetite;  but  there  was  the  fact,  unques 
tionable  and  satisfying,  that  at  the  table  with 
males  only  he  had  discovered  bodily  abysses 
within  himself  that  had  never  been  called  into 
requisition  !  He  was  as  frivolous  as  all  this, 
winding  quietly  along  through  those  happy 
years. 

He  recalled  another  incident :  that  during 
one  of  their  first  rabbit  hunts  they  had  fired 
almost  simultaneously  at  the  same  rabbit. 
As  neither  could  claim  the  glory  of  killing  it, 
they  had  decided  that  at  least  they  must  share 
equally  the  glory  of  its  pelt.  And  so,  measuring 
to  an  equal  distance  from  the  tip  of  its  nose  and 
the  tip  of  its  tail,  they  had  there  inserted  a  pen 
knife  and  severed  the  skin;  and  then,  propping 
their  boots,  soles  against  soles,  like  those  resolved 
on  a  tug  of  war,  and  each  taking  hold  of  his  half 
of  the  skin,  with  one  mighty  jerk  backwards 
each  was  in  possession  of  his  trophy!  He  was 
as  frivolous  as  that.  Nor  would  he  ever  leave 


204        THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

this  theme  of  their  friendship,  weaving  about 
it  here  and  there  remembered  tricks  and  es 
capades  as  he  traced  it  down  —  this  bond  in 
their  lives.  (There  were  such  friendships  in 
those  days.) 

And  so  he  poured  out  a  man's  tribute  to  a 
man's  friendship;  and  then  quickly  with  a 
change  of  tone  by  which  we  all  may  intimate 
to  a  visitor  that  his  visit  is  at  an  end,  he  bade 
the  doctor  take  his  leave.  But  he  did  one 
thing  first  —  one  little  thing  :  — 

"  Josephine  sent  you  these,  and  told  me  to 
pin  them  on  you,  with  her  love,"  he  said  with 
a  tremor  of  the  mouth,  his  eyes  filling;  and 
taking  from  the  lapel  of  his  coat  a  little  freshly 
plucked  bunch  of  heliotrope  and  rose  gera 
nium,  he  leaned  affectionately  over  against  the 
doctor's  shoulder  and  pinned  the  flowers  on 
his  breast. 

Then  he  held  out  his  hand  as  if  to  drag  the 
doctor  to  his  feet,  walked  with  him  to  the  buggy, 
pushed  him  in,  put  the  reins  in  his  palm,  and 
gave  a  slap  to  the  horse  to  start  it. 

"Come  to  see  us,  Downs/7  he  said;  "we 
can't  have  you  much  longer." 

Truly  if  the  rest  of  us  had  nobility  enough  to 
treat  one  another's  failings  with  sympathy  and 


EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE         205 

understanding,  there  would  be  few  tragedies 
for  us  in  our  human  lives,  except  the  inevitable 
tragedies  of  nature. 

The  way  in  which  these  two  friends  instead 
of  turning  away  from  him  instantly,  turned 
toward  him,  sparing  not  themselves  that  they 
might  rescue  him  from  what  now  might  swiftly 
and  easily  be  utter  ruin  —  this  most  human 
touch  of  most  human  nobleness  wrought  in  him 
a  revelation  and  a  revolution. 

On  one  day  he  had  gone  to  the  end  of  the  long 
path  of  temptation  :  there  was  relief  in  that  even. 
And  on  the  next  what  is  finest  in  human  nature 
had  come  to  his  rescue.  And  both  of  these 
things  changed  him.  Every  day  since  had  been 
changing  him.  The  unlifted  shadow  that  had 
overlain  the  landscape  of  his  life  had  begun 
to  break  up  into  moving  shadows  traversed 
by  rifts  of  light :  a  ravishing  greenness  began 
to  reappear  in  the  world.  That  old  irremovable 
obstruction  across  his  road  had  been  withdrawn  : 
once  again  there  was  a  clear  path  and  single 
vision. 

But  the  sower  may  become  a  new  character ; 
the  growth  of  what  he  has  sowed  must  go  on. 
And  the  doctor  with  a  vision  clarified  and 
corrected  now  saw  thriving  everywhere  around 
him  young  plants  the  germs  of  which  he  had  so 


206         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

long  been  scattering.  A  farmer  might  from  a 
field  by  dint  of  infinite  patience  and  searching 
recover  every  seed  that  he  had  thrown  forth ; 
but  as  well  might  he  try  to  gather  back  a  shower 
of  raindrops  from  dry  clods. 

And  as  the  doctor  sat  in  his  library  that  morn 
ing  with  this  final  announcement  to  him  of 
how  things  sown  were  growing  in  the  nature  of 
his  little  boy,  it  seemed  to  him  the  moment  to 
call  upon  Nature  for  a  settlement  — Nature  who 
never  fails  to  collect  a  bill,  but  who  never  pays 
one.  And  sitting  tKere  with  the  whole  subject 
before  him  as  a  physician  studying  his  own  case, 
he  asked  of  Nature  whether  without  any  will 
of  his  own  she  had  not  started  him  in  life  with 
too  great  susceptibility  to  the  power  of  sugges 
tion.  Far  back  when  his  character  was  being 
moulded,  had  not  Nature  seen  to  it  that  wrong 
suggestions  were  sown  in  him  ?  Had  not  all  his 
trouble  started  there?  Was  not  he  harvesting 
what  he  had  not  scattered  ?  This  immeas 
urable  power  of  suggestion,  this  new  mystery 
which  innumerable  minds  were  now  trying 
to  fathom,  to  govern,  to  apply.  -:  This  fresh 
field  of  research  for  his  own  science  of  medicine 
—  this  wounding  and  this  healing,  this  way 
laying  and  misleading,  by  suggestion.  This 
plan  of  Nature  that  no  human  being  should 


EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE         207 

escape  it,  that  it  should  be  the  very  ether  which 
all  must  breathe. 

Meantime  out  of  doors  the  face  of  Nature 
had  rapidly  changed;  his  forecast  of  early 
morning  had  been  fulfilled :  the  wind  had  died 
down,  clouds  had  overspread  the  sky,  and  it  was 
snowing  rapidly.  On  turnpike  and  lane  and 
crossroads  there  was  falling  the  dry  snow  of 
true  winter  when  there  is  sleighing. 

He  had  given  up  work  and  had  long  been 
walking  restlessly  to  and  fro  from  one  room  to 
another ;  and  now  as  he  stood  at  a  window  and 
looked  out  at  the  mantle  of  ermine  being  woven 
for  all  unsightly  things,  at  the  hiding  away  of 
the  year's  blots  and  stains  under  the  one  new 
spotlessness,  his  thoughts  buried  themselves 
with  getting  out  his  own  sleigh  and  with  his 
trip  across  country  in  the  afternoon  to  the  homes 
of  the  sick  children.  But  more  intimately  he 
thought  of  the  long  drive  homeward  from  the 
distant  county  seat  late  that  night  —  with  his 
memories  of  Christmas  Eve. 

He  turned  from  the  window,  and  going  to 
his  office  set  about  the  work  of  mending  the 
sleigh-bells.  For  some  reason  he  did  this 
most  quietly  lest  they  should  send  any  sound 
through  the  stillness  of  the  house.  Once  as  a 


208         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

bell  tumbled  out  of  its  place,  instinctively  he 
put  his  hand  over  it  as  though  it  were  human 
and  he  must  silence  its  mouth  of  merriment. 
Sleigh-bells  seemed  out  of  place  in  these  rooms; 
they  threw  their  music  into  old  wounds.  When 
he  had  finished,  he  put  them  just  inside  the  door 
of  the  small  room  opening  toward  the  stable 
where  his  man  could  take  them  away  without 
making  any  noise. 

And  now  another  sound  caught  the  doctor's 
ear  as  he  was  washing  his  hands. 

It  was  half  past  twelve  o'clock ;  and  his  wife 
had  entered  the  dining-room  to  begin  some 
early  preparations  for  dinner,  and  she  was  alone. 
She  wished  no  maid  to-day,  apparently,  at  least 
not  yet;  and  as  she  moved  familiarly  about 
there  reached  his  ear  —  very  low,  sung  wholly 
to  herself  —  the  melody  of  a  ballad. 

The  doctor  knew  it  —  words  and  music  :  it 
was  the  Ballad  of  the  Trees  and  the  Master. 
In  this  the  poet  —  a  Southern  poet  who  him 
self  alike  through  genius  and  suffering  had 
entered  while  on  earth  into  the  divine  —  in 
this  the  poet  had  represented  the  Son  of  Man 
as  going  into  the  woods  when  his  hour  was 
near;  into  the  woods  for  such  strength  as  the 
forest  only  may  sometimes  give  us :  the  same 
forest  out  of  which  humanity  itself  had  emerged 


EVERGREEN  AND  THORN  TREE         209 

when  it  began  its  troubled  history  of  search 
for  the  ideal. 

Thus  her  song  was  not  of  the  Christmas 
Tree  and  of  the  Manger  when  Divine  love 
arrives;  but  of  the  tree  of  the  Crucifixion  and 
of  love's  betrayal  and  sacrifice  ere  it  goes  away. 
It  was  not  the  carol  of  the  whole  happy  world 
at  this  hour  for  Bethlehem,  but  the  hymn  of 
Calvary  —  the  music  of  the  thorn  tree  and  of 
the  Crown  of  Thorns. 

And  this  from  his  wife  on  Christmas  Eve ! 
—  not  for  his  ear :  not  for  any  one's  ear :  but 
to  herself  alone. 

As  he  listened,  with  an  overmastering  im 
pulse  he  walked  to  the  corner  of  the  library  and 
stood  before  her  picture.  He  noticed  that  in 
the  careless  haste  of  holiday  house-cleaning 
to-day  the  servant  had  left  on  the  glass  of  the 
frame  some  finger-prints,  some  particles  of  dust. 
He  brought  a  little  moistened  antiseptic  sponge 
and  a  little  red-cross  gauze,  and  softly  cleaned 
it  as  though  he  were  touching  a  wound.  Then 
he  returned  to  the  window  and  watched  the 
snow  falling  and  heard  his  wife's  song  through 
to  the  end. 

It  was  she  to  whom  he  owed  everything.  It 
was  she  who,  a  few  years  after  their  marriage, 
having  discovered  herself  to  be  an  unloved 


210         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

bride,  had  thrown  her  whole  agonized  nature 
into  the  one  remaining  chance  of  winning  his 
love  as  young  wife  and  young  mother.  Hav 
ing  seen  that  hope  pass  from  her,  she  had  with 
drawn  from  one  tragedy  into  a  lesser  one :  she 
had  withdrawn  from  him.  And  so  withdraw 
ing,  she  held  the  whole  power  of  ruining  him. 
Divorce  —  open  separation  —  and  his  career  as 
a  physician  in  that  land  would  have  been  ended. 

Instead,  she  too  had  come  to  his  rescue. 
Slowly  out  of  that  too  swift  and  pitiless  a  fate 
for  her  own  life,  she  had  begun  to  work  for  the 
success  of  his :  it  was  of  too  much  value  to 
many  to  be  brought  to  nothingness  for  the 
disappointment  of  one. 

The  doctor  stood  there,  looking  out  at  the 
snowstorm  and  thinking  how  all  the  people 
who  could  most  have  destroyed  him  had 
spared  not  themselves  to  make  him  happy  and 
successful  and  useful. 

The  dining-room  doors  were  thrown  open  — 
he  went  in  to  dinner. 


PART   II 


PAKT   II 


TWO   OTHER   WINTER   SNOWBIRDS   AT   A   WINDOW 

"Do  you  see  them  coming,  Elizabeth?" 
"Not  yet  —  except  in  my  mind's  eye." 
"Your  mind's  eye  !    Always  that  mind's  eye  ! 
Till  you  see  them  with  something  better  than  your 
mind's  eye,  don't  disturb  me,  Elizabeth.     I  have 
just  come  to   the  Battle  of  Hastings.     I  am 
going  to  fight  as  King  Harold.     Old  William 
the  Conqueror  has  just  finished  saying  his  hypo 
critical  prayers.     I  am  arming  for  him  !" 

"Arm  away!"  said  Elizabeth,  never  inter 
ested  in  arming. 

She  stood  at  the  sunny  window  of  the  library. 
With  one  rosy  finger-nail  she  had  scratched  some 
frost  off  a  window-pane,  and  with  her  face  close 
to  the  clear  spot  was  peeping  out.  Her  fingers 
tapped  a  contented  ditty  on  the  window-sill. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  other  voice  was 
heard  again :  it  came  from  the  direction  of  a 

213 


214         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

sofa  in  the  room,  and  seemed  to  rise  out  of  half- 
smothering  cushions :  — 

"  While  the  battle  is  going  on,  you  might  look 
around  once  more  for  the  key,  Elizabeth.  Like!  y 
enough  they  have  it  hid  somewhere  in  here. 
They  got  the  Tree  into  the  house  last  night 
without  our  catching  them.  And  after  they 
think  we  are  asleep  to-night,  they'll  hang  the 
presents  on,  and  to-morrow  they'll  pretend 
they  didn't.  But  we  can't  let  them  go  on 
treating  us  like  infants,  or  as  if  we  were  no  bet 
ter  than  immigrants.  That's  what  little  immi 
grants  believe  !  And  that's  how  we  got  the 
notion  in  this  country.  Old  William  was  an 
immigrant !  But  I  wouldn't  loathe  him  as  I  do 
if  he  hadn't  been  one  of  the  hypocritical  pray 
ing  immigrants.  He  could  have  prayed  without 
being  a  hypocrite,  Elizabeth;  and  he  could 
have  been  a  hypocrite  without  praying ;  but  he 
wanted  to  be  both,  the  old  beast !" 

"But  he  stopped  praying  centuries  ago, 
Harold,"  said  Elizabeth,  rubbing  her  long  nose 
against  the  window-pane  as  though  she  had  a 
mind  to  shorten  it  on  a  grindstone.  "Can't 
you  find  enough  in  the  world  to  fight  without 
going  away  back  to  fight  William  the  Con 
queror?  What  have  we  Kentucky  children 
got  to  do  with  William  the  Conqueror  on  Christ- 


TWO  OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS       215 

mas  Eve  !  And  suppose  he  was  a  hypocrite 
then ;  he  can't  be  a  hypocrite  now  !  If  he  went 
where  it's  nicest  to  go,  it  must  have  been  taken 
out  of  him  by  this  tune ;  and  if  he  went  where 
they  say  it  is  not  so  nice,  O  dear !  of  course, 
I  don't  know  what  became  of  it  there;  it  may 
have  exploded;  it  may  have  blown  him  up." 
Elizabeth  had  begun  her  earliest  study  of  chem 
istry;  she  disliked  explosive  gases. 

A  few  minutes  later  the  deliberate  voice  rose 
out  of  the  sofa  pillows : — 

"I  wish  it  had  been  me  to  turn  the  heat  on 
him  :  I'd  have  made  him  sizzle  !  If  you  find 
the  key,  lay  it  aside  quietly,  Elizabeth.  By 
that  tune  the  moon  may  be  shining  down  on 
the  battle-field  where  I  am  dead  among  my 
common  soldiers,  all  of  us  covered  with  gore : 
let  the  king  lie  there  with  them  as  one  of  them : 
doesn't  that  sound  fine?" 

"Not  to  me!"  said  Elizabeth.  "It  sounds 
like  nonsense :  what's  the  matter  with  your 
mind's  eye,  I  beg  to  inquire?" 

Elizabeth  was  nondescript.  Her  hair  was 
golden-red  and  as  soft  as  woven  wind.  Her 
skin  had  the  fairness  of  peach  bloom  when  bees 
are  coming  and  going  in  the  sunlit  air  and  there 
is  such  sweetness.  Under  her  eyes  lay  a  deeper 
flush  like  that  sometimes  seen  on  a  child's  face 


216         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

after  a  first  day's  sunburn  by  the  waterside  in 
springtime.  Her  own  face  might  have  been 
called  the  face  of  four  crescents.  Two  of  the 
crescents  you  always  saw  —  her  eyebrows,  twin 
down-curved  bands  of  palest  gold.  In  order  to 
see  the  other  crescents,  you  had  only  to  tell 
Elizabeth  some  story.  As  you  finished,  she  who 
had  been  leaning  over  toward  you  slowly  closed 
her  eyes  and  drew  in  a  breath  as  though  to  drink 
the  last  delight  of  it ;  her  thin  lips  parted  tightly 
across  her  pointed  little  teeth  in  a  smile  of 
thanks ;  and  then  in  each  cheek  a  curved  dimple 
came  out,  shaped  like  what  the  farmers  in  Eliza 
beth's  country  call  "a  dry  moon"  when  it  ap 
pears  thus  set  up  on  end  in  the  evening  sky  — 
the  water  for  the  month  having  all  run  out. 

Elizabeth's  nose  did  not  appear  to  have  origi 
nated  in  the  New  World,  but  to  be  one  of  those 
steep  Lombard  noses,  which  on  the  faces  of 
northern  Italians  seem  to  have  started  down 
the  Alps  in  a  landslide,  to  have  gone  a  certain 
distance  toward  the  Mediterranean,  and  then 
suddenly  to  have  disappeared  over  the  precipice 
of  the  chin.  Across  the  Alpine  nose  was  stretched 
a  tiny  spiderweb  golden  bridge :  Elizabeth  wore 
spectacles.  The  frames  were  of  the  palest  gold 
-  she  insisted  they  must  be  the  exact  color  of 
her  eyebrows. 


TWO   OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS      217 

It  was  the  glasses  perhaps  that  gave  to  her 
face  its  look  of  dreaminess.  But  there  were 
times  when  her  eyes  pained.  (All  the  doctors 
had  never  been  able  to  keep  them  from  paining.) 
And  this  often  compelled  her  to  sit  with  them 
closed  and  do  nothing ;  then  her  face  became 
dreamier.  But  always  the  look  bespoke  an  in 
trospection  of  happiness.  It  drew  your  mind 
back  to  the  work  of  those  unknown  artisans  of 
Tanagra,  who  centuries  before  our  era  expressed 
in  little  terra-cotta  figures  the  freedom  and  joy 
of  Greek  children  in  the  old  Greek  life.  What 
ever  the  children  are  doing,  they  are  happy  about 
it;  if  they  are  doing  nothing,  they  are  happy 
about  doing  nothing. 

Thus,  as  long  as  Elizabeth's  eyes  were  open  on 
the  world,  they  found  the  things  that  made  her 
happy,  neglecting  the  rest.  No  psyche  winging 
the  wide  plain  ever  went  more  surely  to  its 
needed  blossom,  disregarding  otherwise  the 
crowded  acres.  And  when  her  tired  eyes  were 
closed  and  the  golden  bridge  was  lifted  off  the 
Lombard  nose,  they  were  opened  upon  an  inner 
world  as  enchanting.  For  with  that  gift  which 
belongs  to  childhood  and  to  genius  alone,  as  the 
real  things  of  life  which  she  had  loved  disap 
peared,  she  caught  them  alive  and  transferred 
them  to  another  land.  There  also  she  kept  all 


218         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  other  beautiful  things  that  had  never  been 
real  on  the  earth  but  ought  to  have  been  real, 
as  she  insisted ;  and  on  these  Elysian  Fields  her 
spirit  went  to  play.  She  was  already  old 
enough  to  realize  that  she  was  constantly  out 
growing  things;  but  as  they  were  borne  back 
ward  into  the  distance  she  turned  and  laid  her 
fingers  on  her  lips  in  farewell  to  them  —  little 
Niobe  of  unshed  tears  over  life's  changes.  Her 
soul  seemed  to  be  this,  that  she  could  not  turn 
against  anything  she  once  had  loved,  nor  cease 
to  be  loyal  to  it  after  it  was  ruined  or  gone.  As 
a  swallow  remembers  the  eaves  whether  the 
skies  be  bright  or  dark,  the  nature  of  Elizabeth 
sheltered  itself  under  the  old  world's  roof  of 
love. 

It  was  this  intense  fidelity  of  character  that 
now  kept  her  in  her  watch  at  the  window,  wait 
ing  for  the  two  friends  who  were  to  make  them 
four  children  on  Christmas  Eve.  Once,  indeed? 
as  no  figures  were  to  be  seen  far  or  near  out  on 
the  winter  landscape,  she  turned  softly  into  the 
room,  and  much  against  her  will  continued  her 
search  for  the  key  that  would  unlock  the  doors 
connecting  the  library  with  the  parlor  —  the 
dark  and  suddenly  mysterious  parlor  where  the 
Christmas  Tree  now  stood. 

There  was  a  mingling  of  three  odors  in  the 


TWO  OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS       219 

library  that  forenoon.  Into  one  wall  an  old 
white  marble  mantel-piece  was  built,  decorated 
on  each  side  with  huge  bunches  of  grapes  —  a 
votive  offering  by  Bacchus,  god  of  the  inner 
fire,  to  Pluto,  god  of  the  outer  fire.  This  mantel 
now  held  in  its  heart  a  crimson  glow  of  anthracite 
coals ;  and  the  wintry  smell  of  coal  gas  was 
comfortably  pervasive.  Making  its  summer- 
like  way  through  the  gas  was  the  fragrance  of 
rose  geranium,  some  pots  of  which  were  bloom 
ing  on  a  window-sill  just  inside  the  silvery  land 
scapes  of  frost.  A  third  and  more  powerful 
odor  was  that  of  a  bruised  evergreen,  boughs  of 
which  had  been  crushed  in  handling,  and  the  sap 
of  which,  oozing  from  the  trunk,  scattered  far 
its  wild  balsam :  the  fragrance  ever  suggested 
the  fir  in  the  next  room. 

Elizabeth  went  first  to  the  mantel,  and  putting 
one  little  freckled  hand  on  the  Parian  marble, 
and  a  little  freckled  (perhaps)  foot  on  the  brass 
fender,  and  pressing  her  side  against  the  Bacchic 
grapes  (which  might  well  have  become  purpling 
at  the  moment),  she  opened  the  clock  and  looked 
in.  The  clock  key  was  there,  and  Elizabeth 
was  used  to  see  her  mother  take  it  out  for  the 
winding  of  the  hours  —  always  the  winding  of 
the  hours,  the  winding  of  the  years,  the  wind 
ing  of  life. 


220         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Next  she  went  to  another  window  where  the 
geraniums  were  blooming,  and  looked  on  the 
sill :  these  geraniums  were  her  mother's  especial 
care,  as  everything  in  the  house  was  her  especial 
care;  and  Elizabeth  had  often  watched  her 
pouring  water  on  the  budding  green  of  the  plants 
as  though  the  drops  were  bright  tears  :  once  she 
believed  the  bright  drops  were  tears. 

Then  she  passed  on  to  the  locked  connecting 
doors  between  the  library  and  the  parlor,  sniffing 
as  she  drew  near  the  odor  of  the  fir  —  sniffing  it 
with  sensitive  nostril  as  a  fawn  on  some  wild 
mountain-side  questions  the  breeze  blowing 
from  beds  of  inaccessible  herbage.  Every  spring 
when  the  parlor  was  locked  for  cleaning  and 
when  children's  feet  and  fingers  must  be  kept 
from  wet  paint,  she  was  used  to  see  her  mother 
lock  these  doors  and  lay  the  key  along  the 
edge  of  the  carpet.  It  was  not  there  now, 
however. 

Then  Elizabeth  looked  in  one  more  place. 

The  library  had  shelves  along  one  wall  reach 
ing  from  the  floor  well  up  toward  the  ceiling  in 
the  old  Southern  way.  Filling  the  shelves  at 
one  end  were  the  older  books  of  the  house,  show 
ing  the  good  but  narrow  taste  of  a  Southern 
household  in  former  times.  Midway,  the  mod 
ern  books  were  massed,  ranging  through  part  of 


TWO   OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS       221 

the  world's  classic  literature  and  through  no 
little  of  the  world's  new  science ;  and  so  marking 
a  transition  in  culture  to  the  present  master  and 
mistress.  At  the  other  end  of  the  shelves  there 
was  a  children's  corner  of  the  world's  best  fairy 
tales,  some  English,  some  German,  some  Scan 
dinavian  —  most  of  them  written  for  little 
people  where  winters  are  long  and  snows  deep 
and  pine  forests  boundless. 

She  went  to  the  shelf  where  the  day  before  she 
had  observed  her  mother  put  a  book  back  into 
its  place :  the  book  was  there,  but  no  key.  So 
she  passed  along  the  shelves  back  toward  the 
window,  where  she  maintained  her  lookout ;  and 
she  trailed  her  finger-tips  along  the  backs  of  the 
books  as  she  passed  the  children's  corner  of  fairy 
tales  :  it  was  a  habit  of  hers  to  caress  things  she 
was  fond  of  as  long  as  they  remained  within 
reach.  Once  her  hand  almost  touched  the  key 
where  it  lay  hidden  —  among  those  old-time 
Christmas  stories. 

Half  glad  that  her  search  had  been  In  vain, 
she  returned  to  her  vigil  at  the  window. 

" Did  you  find  the  key?" 

"No;  and  I'm  not  sorry  I  didn't."  And 
then  she  suddenly  cried:  "They  are  coming, 
Harold  !  I  see  them  away  of!  on  the  hilltop 
yonder,  running  and  jumping." 


222         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

The  boy  sat  up  on  the  edge  of  the  sofa.  He 
had  on  a  suit  of  cassimere  of  a  kind  of  blue-lime 
stone  gray  as  though  the  rock  of  the  land  had 
been  used  as  a  dye ;  and  the  brass  buttons  of  his 
jacket  marked  him  as  a  member  of  some  military 
institute,  which  had  released  him  for  the  holi 
days.  He  laid  aside  his  Book  of  the  World's 
Great  Battles,  and  put  the  hair  out  of  his  eyes. 
They  had  the  bold  keenness  of  a  hawk's;  and 
his  profile  was  as  sharply  cut  as  though  it  had 
been  chipped  along  the  edge  of  a  white  flint. 

Any  historian  of  the  main  stock  of  our  early 
American  people  would  have  fixed  curious  eyes 
on  him.  Merely  to  behold  him  was  to  think 
backward  across  oceans  and  ages  to  a  race 
emerging  into  notice  along  the  coast  of  the 
yellow-surging  North  Sea :  known  already  to 
their  historians  for  straight  blond  hair  falling 
over  bluish  gray  eyes ;  large  bodies  with  shapely 
white  limbs ;  braggart  voices,  arrogant  tempers ; 
play-loving  and  fight-loving  dispositions;  in 
grained  honor  and  valor:  their  animal  natures 
rooted  in  attachment  to  their  country;  and 
their  spiritual  natures  soaring  away  toward 
an  ideal  of  truth  and  strength  set  somewhere 
in  a  heaven.  He  was  an  offshoot  of  this  old 
race,  breeding  stubbornly  true  on  these  late 
Kentucky  fields. 


TWO  OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS      223 

"They  are  coming !  They  are  coming  at 
last!"  cried  Elizabeth,  beckoning  to  him. 

The  boy  got  up  and  strolled  over  to  the 
window  and  stood  beside  his  sister,  most  unlike 
her:  he  springing  from  the  land  as  rank  as  its 
corn;  she  being  without  a  country,  a  little 
winged  soul  wandering  through  the  universe, 
that  merely  by  means  of  birth  had  alighted  on 
Kentucky  ground.  At  this  moment  beside  the 
grave  one-toned  figure  of  her  brother  the  many- 
colored  nature  of  Elizabeth  had  its  counterpart 
hi  the  picture  she  offered  to  the  eye ;  for  the  sun 
light  out  of  doors  falling  on  the  frost-jewelled 
window-panes  spun  a  silvery  radiance  about  the 
golden-red  of  the  wind-woven  hair,  heightened 
the  transparency  of  her  skin,  and  stroked  with 
softest  pencil  her  little  frock  of  forget-me-not 
blue.  Had  she  been  lifted  to  the  window-frame, 
she  would  have  looked  like  some  portrait  of  her 
self  done  in  stained  glass  —  all  atmosphered  with 
seraphic  brilliancy.  As  to  the  forget-me-not 
frock,  everything  that  Elizabeth  wore  seemed 
to  cherish  her ;  her  dresses  bloomed  about  her 
thin,  unbeautiful  figure  like  flowers  bent  on  hid 
ing  it,  trained  there  by  a  mother's  watchfulness. 

"Now  I  am  perfectly  happy/'  she  murmured, 
pressing  her  face  fondly  against  his.  "I  was 
afraid  it  would  be  too  cold  for  them  to  come." 


224         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

The  boy  pushed  her  away,  and  placed  his  eye 
at  the  small  clear  spot  on  the  window-pane. 

"Elizabeth,"  he  said,  squinting  critically,  "if 
this  is  the  best  spy-glass  you  have,  you  would 
make  very  little  headway  with  the  enemy." 

"I  didn't  have  to  make  headway  with  the 
enemy!"  cried  Elizabeth,  rejecting  his  hostile 
utterance ;  "I  merely  wished  to  see  my  friends.77 

The  boy  kept  his  eye  at  the  lookout. 

"Elsie  has  on  a  red  woollen  helmet ;  and  she 
looks  as  though  she  were  dyed  in  gore.  I  wish 
it  were  old  William's  gore  !77 

The  sight  of  those  far-off  figures  dancing 
toward  her  had  awaked  in  Elizabeth  an  ecstasy, 
and  she  began  to  weave  light-footed  measures 
of  her  own. 

"Now  I  am  perfectly  happy,77  she  sang,  but 
rather  to  herself  as  she  whirled  round  the 
room. 

Her  brother  turned  toward  her  and  propped 
his  back  against  the  window  and  folded  his 
arms :  he  looked  like  a  dwarf  who  had  been  a 
major-general  and  was  conscious  of  it. 

"Fll  not  be  happy  until  that  key  is  found. 
I  don't  propose  to  be  defeated.77 

"Oh,  Harold,  why  can7t  we  leave  everything 
as  it  has  always  been,  if  they  want  it !  If  papa 
and  mamma  wish  to  have  one  more  old-fashioned 


TWO  OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS       225 

Christmas,  —  and  you  know  it's  the  last,  —  if 
they  wish  to  have  one  more,  so  do  I  and  so  do 
you!" 

"I  can't  pretend,  Elizabeth:  they  needn't 
ask  me  to  pretend." 

Elizabeth  began  to  dance  toward  him  with 
fairy  beautiful  mockery  : — 

"You  just  pretended  you  were  dead  on  the 
battle-field,  among  your  soldiers :  you  just  pre 
tended  the  moon  was  shining.  You  just  pre 
tended  Elsie  had  on  a  red  woollen  helmet.  You 
just  pretended  you  were  fighting  William  the 
Conqueror.  Oh,  no  !  It  is  impossible  for  you 
to  pretend,  you  poor  deficient  child  !" 

' '  That's  different,  Elizabeth.  That's  not  pre 
tending  ;  that's  imagining.  You  knew  it  wasn't 
true :  there  wasn't  any  secret  about  it : 
it  didn't  fool  anybody.  But  this  pretending 
about  Christmas  and  about  how  things  get  on 
the  Tree,  and  that  idiotic  old  buffoon  !  —  that's 
trying  to  make  us  believe  it  is  true  when  it  is 
not  true ;  and  that  it  is  real  when  it  is  not  real ! 
That's  the  way  fathers  and  mothers  raise  their 
little  immigrants  !" 

Elizabeth  danced  before  him  more  wildly, 
watching  him  with  love  and  beautiful  laughter : 
"So  when  papa  says  he  is  Santa  Claus,  he  is 
pretending  !  And  when  you  say  you  are  King 


226         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Harold,  you're  imagining  !  Why,  what  a  bright 
child  you  are  !  How  did  you  ever  get  to  be  a 
member  of  this  dull  family?" 

"I  didn't  expect  you  to  understand  the  dif 
ference,  because  you  girls  are  used  to  doing 
both  —  you  girls  !  How  could  you  know  the 
difference  between  imagining  and  pretending  — 
you  girls  !  When  you  are  always  doing  both  — 
you  girls  !" 

"Why,  what  superior  creatures  we  must  be, 
to  do  so  much  more  than  boys,"  sang  Elizabeth. 
Her  head  was  filled  with  fragments  of  nursery 
ditties ;  and  the  occasion  seemed  to  warrant 
the  production  of  one.  With  her  eyes  resting 
on  him,  she  made  a  little  dance  in  his  honor  and 
at  his  expense;  and  she  cadenced  her  footfalls 
to  the  rhythm  of  her  words :  — 

The  innocent  lambs  !  — 

They  have  no  shams, 
And  they've  nothing  but  wool  to  hide  them. 

They  cannot  pretend 

Because  at  one  end 
They've  nothing  but  tails  to  guide  them. 

She  suddenly  glided  forward  step  by  step, 
airy  sylph  of  unearthly  joy,  and  threw  her  arms 
around  his  neck  and  covered  his  face  with 
kisses,  and  then  darted  away  from  him  again, 
dancing.  With  his  arms  folded  he  looked  at 


TWO   OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS       227 

her  as  a  stone  mile-post  might  have  looked  at  a 
ruby- throated  humming-bird. 

"You  promised/'  he  said  —  "you  promised 
that  we'd  find  the  key,  and  that  all  four  of  us 
would  walk  in  on  them  to-night.  But  what  do 
you  know  about  keeping  promises  —  you  girls  !" 

"I'll  keep  my  promise,  but  I  hope  I  won't  find 
the  key,"  said  Elizabeth,  as  her  dance  grew 
wilder  with  the  rising  whirlwind  of  expectation. 
"But  why  shouldn't  papa  and  mamma  have  one 
more  Christmas  as  they  wish  it !  Of  course  we 
can't  care  as  much  for  old  tunes  as  they  do; 
but  be  reasonable,  Harold!" 

"I  can't  be  reasonable  that  way.  Haven't 
they  always  told  us  never  to  pretend  ?  Haven't 
they  always  taught  us  not  to  have  secrets? 
Haven't  they  always  said  that  a  house  with  a 
secret  in  it  wasn't  a  good  home  for  children? 
Why  can't  Christmas  be  as  open  as  all  out 
of  doors?  Isn't  that  what  they  call  being 
American  —  to  be  as  open  as  all  out  of  doors  ? 
It's  the  little  immigrants  who  have  secrets  hi 
them." 

At  that  moment  there  was  a  sound  of  feet, 
muffled  with  yarn  stockings,  stamping  trium 
phantly  on  the  porch. 

"Oh,  there  they  are!"  cried  Elizabeth,  dart 
ing  out  of  the  room  to  receive  her  guests. 


228         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

More  slowly  the  gray-toned  little  figure  with  the 
white  hair  falling  over  his  hawk  eyes  and  with 
the  profile  of  white  flint  followed  her. 

And  three  great  spirits  there  were  that  walked 
with  the  lad  that  day  —  as  with  thousands  of 
other  lads  like  him:  the  spirit  of  his  race, 
the  spirit  of  his  land,  and  the  spirit  of  his 
house. 

The  real  darkness  of  the  Middle  Ages  was  the 
spiritual  night  that  settled  upon  children  as  they 
began  to  play  about  their  homes  and  to  ask  the 
meanings  of  them  —  why  they  were  built  as  they 
were  —  and  the  meaning  of  other  things  they 
saw  in  them  and  around  them.  The  architects 
of  those  centuries  designed  their  noblest  build 
ings  often  with  an  eye  to  many  of  the  worst 
passions  of  human  nature.  Toiling  masons 
slowly  put  into  mortar  and  stone  exact  arrange 
ments  for  the  violent  and  the  vile :  they  built 
not  for  the  good  in  human  character,  but  against 
evil  —  not  for  a  heaven  on  earth,  but  against  a 
hell  on  earth.  When  the  owners  took  posses 
sion,  they  had  placed  between  themselves  and 
the  surrounding  world  the  strongest  possible 
proofs  of  a  hostile  and  vicious  attitude.  Even 
within  then-  homes  they  had  fortified  one  intimate 
part  against  another  intimate  part  until  it  was 
as  though  the  ventricles  of  the  human  heart  had 


TWO  OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS       229 

walled  themselves  in  distrust  away  from  the 
auricles. 

The  mental  and  moral  gloom  of  such  homes 
hung  destructively,  appallingly  over  children. 
The  very  architecture  taught  them  their  first 
bad  lessons.  Lifted  in  their  nurse's  or  mother's 
arms,  they  peered  from  parapet  down  upon  draw 
bridge  and  moat  —  at  danger.  At  the  entrances 
they  saw  massive  doors  built  to  shut  out  death, 
perhaps  battle-hacked,  blood-stained.  From 
these  they  learned  violence  and  the  habit  of  kill 
ing.  Trap-doors  taught  them  treachery.  Sliding- 
panels  in  walls  taught  them  cunning,  flight,  and 
cowardice,  eaves-dropping.  Underground  dun 
geons  taught  them  revenge,  cruelty,  persecution 
to  the  death  :  they  might  look  down  into  one  and 
see  lying  there  some  victim  of  slow  starvation 
or  slow  torture.  Nearly  every  leading  vicious 
trait  born  in  them  seized  upon  the  house  itself 
for  development,  and  began  to  clamber  up  its 
walls  as  naturally  as  castle  ivy. 

Little  children  of  the  Dark  Ages  !  —  does  any 
one  now  ever  try  to  enter  into  their  terrors  and 
troubles  and  warped  souls  ?  Can  any  one  con 
ceivably  nowadays  look  out  upon  human  life  or 
up  to  the  heavens  through  their  vision  ! 

When  the  Anglo-Saxon,  heaven's  blue  in  his 
eyes,  sunlight  in  his  hair,  the  conquest  of  the 


230         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

future  in  his  brain,  the  peopling  of  the  future  in 
his  loins,  breasted  fresh  waters  and  reached  the 
distant  shore,  he  had  come  to  a  great  land  where 
he  could  build  for  the  best  that  was  in  him. 
The  story  of  the  black  slave  fleeing  across  a 
Western  river  from  a  slave  state  into  a  free 
state,  thrilling  millions  in  this  country,  is  as 
nothing  to  the  story  of  the  White  Slave  of  the 
Ages  who  escaped  across  an  ocean  into  a  world 
where  he  became  a  free  man.  The  cabins  of 
this  New  World  became  the  nurseries  of  a  new 
kind  of  childhood  on  the  earth.  There  is  no 
possibility  of  measuring  the  effect  upon  a  child 
and  upon  the  man  he  is  to  be  even  of  a  door  that 
has  no  lock  and  of  windows  that  have  no  shutters. 
It  was  while  sleeping  behind  such  undefended 
doors  and  windows  that  the  gaunt  mated  lions 
and  lionesses  on  the  Western  frontiers  of  this 
Republic  bred  in  chaste  passion  their  lean 
cubs.  Out  of  such  a  cabin  without  a  bolt  and 
with  its  mere  latchstring  there  walked  forth  a 
new  type  of  American  man,  the  Nation's  man, 
who  as  a  child  had  trusted  the  open  door  in  his 
father's  house,  and  as  a  man  trusted  the  door 
of  humanity  :  nor  had  within  himself  secret  nor 
secrecy,  nor  trick  nor  guile,  nor  double-dealing 
nor  cruelty,  nor  vindictiveness  nor  revenge  — 
the  naked  American,  unpollutable  iron  of  its 


TWO  OTHER  WINTER  SNOWBIRDS       231 

strength  and  honor,  Child  of  the  New  Child 
hood,  Man  of  the  New  Manhood,  with  the 
great  silence  in  him  that  is  in  the  Great. 

The  birthplace  of  Harold  and  Elizabeth  was 
one  of  the  thousands  and  thousands  of  plain 
American  homes  in  Kentucky  and  elsewhere  that 
are  the  breeding-grounds  and  fortresses  of  the 
Republic's  impregnable  virtue.  The  house  had 
never  taught  them  a  bad  lesson ;  it  had  never 
offered  them  an  architectural  trait  to  which  their 
own  coarser  human  traits  could  attach  them 
selves.  It  had  never  uttered  a  suggestion  that 
there  is  anything  wrong  in  the  human  nature 
dwelling  within  it  or  human  nature  approaching 
it  from  without.  It  was  built  against  one 
enemy  —  the  climate.  And  whenever  the  cli 
mate  began  war  on  the  house,  the  children  had 
a  chance  to  see  how  well  prepared  for  war  it 
was :  the  climate  always  retreated,  whipped  in 
the  end. 

Their  land  was  like  their  birthplace.  The 
earliest  generations  of  little  white  Kentuckians 
had  good  reason  to  dread  their  country  —  no 
children  anywhere  ever  had  more.  It  was  their 
Dark  Ages.  Death  encompassed  them.  Tor 
ture  snatched  them  from  the  breast.  Terror 
cradled  them.  But  all  that  was  good  and  great 
in  their  parents  fought  on  their  side;  and 


232         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

through  the  Dark  Ages  of  the  West  shone  the 
lustre  of  a  new  chivalry. 

But  all  that  was  changed  long  ago  —  changed 
except  to  history;  and  to  gratitude  which  is  the 
memory  of  the  heart.  On  these  plains  of  Ken 
tucky  no  wildness  any  more,  nothing  unknown 
lurking  anywhere  :  a  deep  strong  land  completely 
gentled  but  not  weakened ;  over  it  drifting  the 
lights  and  shadows  of  tranquil  skies;  and 
throbbing  always  in  the  heart  of  it  a  passion  of 
tenderness  that  draws  its  wandering  children 
back  across  all  distances  and  through  all  years. 

Ay,  there  were  three  great  spirits  that  walked 
with  the  lad  that  day  and  with  the  uncounted 
army  of  his  peers ;  the  spirit  of  their  race  —  the 
old  Anglo-Saxon  race  that  has  made  its  best 
share  of  the  world's  history  by  cutting  away 
with  its  sword  the  rotting  curtains  that  conceal 
sham  and  superstition ;  the  spirit  of  his  country 
which  moves  with  resistless  strength  toward 
the  real  and  the  strong;  and  the  spirit  of  the 
plain  American  home — that  fortress  where  the 
real  and  the  ideal  meet. 


II 

FOUR   IN   A   CAGE 

THE  four  children  early  that  afternoon  were 
shut  in  the  library  with  instructions  from  the 
mother  of  the  household  :  it  was  too  cold  to  go 
out  of  doors  any  more  —  this  was  given  as 
gentle  counsel  to  the  visitors;  their  father — • 
here  the  head  was  shaken  warningly  at  the  other 
two  —  their  father  was  finishing  some  very 
important  work  in  his  library  and  must  not  be 
disturbed  by  noises ;  she  herself  could  not  be  with 
them  longer  because  —  her  eyes  spoke  volumes 
of  delightful  mysteries,  a  volume  that  suggested 
preparations  for  the  coming  Night.  So  they 
must  entertain  themselves  with  whatever  was 
within  reach :  there  were  games,  there  were 
books ;  especially  wonderful  old  Christmas 
tales.  They  must  not  forget  to  read  from 
these.  Finally  she  summed  up :  they  must 
remember  in  whatever  they  did  and  whatever 
they  said  that  they  were  American  children 
playing  on  Christmas  Eve  —  the  last  of  the 
Kentucky  Christmas  Eves  hi  that  house  ! 

233 


234        THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

The  children  thought,  at  least  Elsie  thought, 
that  they  would  have  a  better  time  if  they  were 
allowed  to  be  simply  children  instead  of  American 
children :  and  she  said  so.  She  was  of  the  opinion 
that  being  American  interfered  a  good  deal  with 
being  natural.  But  the  rejoinder,  made  with  gra- 
ciousness  and  responsive  humor,  was  that  the 
American  back  was  fitted  to  the  burden  and  that 
no  doubt  the  burden  was  fitted  to  the  back :  at 
least  they  could  try  it  and  see  —  and  the  door 
was  softly  closed. 

The  children  gathered  almost  immediately 
about  a  centre-table  on  which  were  books  and 
many  magazines,  very  modern  and  very  Amer 
ican  magazines,  which  were  pleasantly  lighted 
of  evenings  by  a  reading-lamp.  The  two  children 
who  were  at  home  were  much  used  to  catching 
echoes  from  those  magazines  as  expounded  and 
discussed  by  mature  heads.  What  attracted 
them  all  now  was  neither  lamp  nor  literature,  but 
a  silver  tray  bearing  plates  and  knives  and  nap 
kins. 

"It  looks  as  though  we  were  going  to  have 
something  delicious/'  said  Elizabeth  daintily; 
and  she  peeped  under  a  napkin,  adding  with 
disappointment:  "Q  dear!  I  am  afraid  it  is 
going  to  be  fruit !" 

Even  as  she  spoke  there  was  a  knock  on  the 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  235 

door  as  though  something  had  been  delayed,  and 
the  door  was  reopened  far  enough  to  admit  the 
maternal  hand  grasping  the  handle  of  a  massive 
old  fruit  basket  piled  with  apples.  There  was  a 
rush  to  the  door,  and  another  protest :  "  Only 
apples,  and  there  are  barrels  of  them  in  the  cellar: 
why  not  potatoes  and  be  done  with  it !  Enter 
tain  one's  company  on  apples  !"  But  the  door 
was  closed  firmly,  and  thus  the  situation  appeared 
to  settle  down  for  the  rest  of  the  afternoon. 

It  soon  having  become  a  problem  of  whether 
the  apples  should  go  to  the  children  or  the  chil 
dren  go  to  the  apples,  Elizabeth  decided  that  it 
should  be  solved  in  the  human  way;  and  she  led 
the  group  back  to  the  table  under  guidance  of 
Elsie's  eyes,  which  more  than  once  had  turned  in 
that  direction  with  a  delicate,  not  to  say  in 
delicate,  suggestion. 

"I  suppose  it  is  better  than  starving,"  she 
remarked  apologetically,  adjusting  her  glasses 
in  order  to  find  the  next  best  apple  for  Herbert 
after  Harold  had  given  the  best  to  Elsie,  and 
as  she  peeled  her  apple,  she  added  with  some 
instinct  of  regret  that  she  was  offering  her  guests 
refreshments  so  meagre  :  — 

"How  much  better  turkey  and  plum  pudding 
sound  in  the  old  Christmas  stories  than  they 
are  when  you  have  them  !" 


236         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Elsie  did  not  agree  with  this  view.  "  I  think 
it  is  much  better  to  have  them/'  she  said. 

"But  in  your  mind's  eye — "  pleaded 
Elizabeth. 

"I  don't  know  so  well  about  that  eye !"  said 
Elsie. 

"Oh,  but,  Elsie,"  insisted  Elizabeth  with  a 
rising  enthusiasm,  "in  Dickens'  Christmas  Carol 
wouldn't  you  rather  the  big  prize  turkey  were 
whirled  away  in  the  cab  to  the  Bob  Cratch- 
its?" 

"I  must  say  that  I  should  not"  contended 
Elsie. 

"But  the  plum  pudding,  Elsie  !"  cried  Eliza 
beth,  now  in  the  full  glow  of  a  beautiful  ardor; 
"when  Mrs.  Cratchit  brings  in  the  plum  pud 
ding  looking  like  a  speckled  cannon-ball,  hard 
and  firm  and  blazing  with  brandy  and  with 
Christmas  holly  stuck  in  the  top  of  it,  wouldn't 
you  rather  the  little  Cratchits  ate  that?" 

"Indeed  I  would!"  said  Elsie;  "for  I  never 
cared  for  that  pudding;  they  were  welcome  to 
it." 

Elizabeth  dropped  her  head  and  was  silent; 
then  she  murmured,  in  wounded  loyalty  to  the 
Cratchits:  "It  must  have  been  good!  Be 
cause  Dickens  said  they  ate  all  of  it  and  wanted 
more.  But  they  tried  to  look  as  though  they'd 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  237 

had  quite  sufficient;  and  I  think  they  were 
very  nice  about  it,  Elsie,  for  children  who  had 
had  so  little  training.  They  behaved  as  very 
well  bred,  indeed." 

"I  don't  doubt  it,"  said  Elsie.  "I  have 
nothing  against  their  manners.  And  I  suppose 
they  thought  it  a  good  pudding  !  I  merely  re 
marked  that  /  did  not  think  it  a  good  pudding  ! 
They  had  their  opinion,  and  I  have  my  opinion 
of  that  pudding." 

The  subject  was  abandoned,  but  a  moment 
later  revived  by  Herbert,  sitting  at  Elizabeth's 
side :  — 

"Dickens  had  a  great  many  more  things  in 
the  Carol  than  the  turkey  and  the  plum  pud 
ding,"  he  observed,  with  his  habit  of  taking  in 
everything;  and  he  began  with  a  memorized  list 
of  the  Carol's  Christmas  luxuries  in  one  heap 
—  passing  from  geese  to  punch.  "  I  always  like 
Dickens  :  he  gives  you  plenty,"  he  concluded. 

"Oh,  bother!"  said  Harold,  the  Kentucky 
Saxon  whose  forefathers  had  been  immigrants 
from  Dickens'  land.  "We  have  everything  in 
Kentucky  that  they  had,  and  more  besides. 
They  can  keep  their  Dickens  !" 

"Oh,  but  Harold,"  pleaded  Elizabeth,  "we 
haven't  any  American  Christmas  stories  !  Not 
one  old  fairy  tale  —  not  one!" 


238         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"We  don't  want  any  old  English  fairy  tales. 
American  children  don't  want  fairy  tales. 
Couldn't  we  have  them  if  we  wanted  them  ?  I 
should  say  so.  Can't  we  make  anything  in  our 
country  that  we  want?" 

"But  the  little  Cratchits,  Harold!"  insisted 
Elizabeth,  "we  do  want  the  little  Cratchits!" 

"We  have  plenty  of  American  Cratchits  just 
as  good  —  and  much  worse." 

The  eating  of  the  apples  now  went  on  silently, 
Elizabeth  having  been  worsted  in  her  battle  for 
the  Cratchits.  But  soon  as  hostess  she  made 
another  effort  to  be  charming. 

"Mamma  tells  us  that  whenever  we  have 
anything  very  very  good,  we  must  always  re 
member  to  leave  a  little  for  Lazarus.  Espe 
cially  at  Christmas  — we  must  remember  to  share 
with  Lazarus  —  to  leave  something  on  our  plates 
for  him." 

"Well,"  said  Elsie,  "Herbert  and  I  have 
always  been  taught  to  leave  something  on  our 
plates  for  good  manners.  But  I  never  heard 
good  manners  called  Lazarus.  I  didn't  suppose 
Lazarus  had  any  manners  !" 

Elizabeth's  face  and  neck  was  colored  with 
a  quick  flame,  and  she  bent  her  head  over  her 
plate  until  her  hair  covered  her  eyes.  She  under 
took  an  explanation :  — 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  239 

"I  think  I  know  what  mamma  meant,  Elsie. 
Mamma  always  means  a  great  deal.  It  was  this 
way:  long,  long  ages  ago  all  over  the  world 
people  had  to  divide  with  imaginary  beings : 
every  year  they  had  to  give  so  much,  part  of 
everything  they  owned.  Then  by  and  by  —  I 
don't  know  the  exact  date,  Elsie,  dear,  and  I 
don't  think  it  makes  much  difference;  but  by 
and  by  there  weren't  any  more  imaginary  beings. 
Mamma  said  that  they  all  disappeared,  going 
down  the  road  of  the  world." 

"But  who  got  all  the  things?"  asked  Elsie. 
"The  imaginary  beings  didn't  get  them." 

"I  suppose  that  is  another  story,"  said  Eliza 
beth,  who  was  determined  this  time  not  to  be 
browbeaten.  "Then  just  as  they  all  disappeared 
down  the  road,  from  the  opposite  direction  there 
came  the  figure  of  a  man  —  Lazarus.  Of  course 
I  can't  tell  it  as  mamma  explains  it  to  me,  but 
this  is  what  it  comes  to :  that  for  ages  and  ages 
people  were  compelled  to  give  up  a  share  of  what 
they  had  to  imaginary  beings ;  but  now  there 
aren't  any  imaginary  beings,  and  we  must  divide 
with  people  we  actually  see." 

"I  don't  actually  see  Lazarus,"  said  Elsie. 

"But  with  your  mind's  eye  —  !" 

"Oh,  that  eye  — !" 

"Mamma  thought  she  would  give  us  a  good 


240         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

send-off  for  Christmas  Eve/'  murmured  Eliza 
beth  with  another  wound :  she  had  been  as 
unfortunate  in  her  crusade  for  Lazarus  as  she 
had  been  with  her  tirade  for  the  Crat chits. 

Elsie  and  Harold  had  pushed  back  their  chairs 
and  frolicked  away  to  a  distant  part  of  the  room 
to  an  unfinished  game  of  backgammon.  Eliza 
beth  dipped  her  fingers  into  her  finger-bowl,  and 
with  admiration  watched  Elsie  in  her  beauty 
and  bouncing  proportions :  for  she  was  a  beau 
tiful  child  —  with  the  beauty  of  round  healthy 
vegetables  displayed  on  market  stalls,  causing  you 
to  feel  comfortable  and  human.  As  for  Eliza 
beth,  her  thinness  had  been  her  pathos :  from 
earliest  childhood  she  had  been  made  to  realize 
on  school  playgrounds  and  in  all  juvenile  com 
panies  that  very  thin  children  win  no  kind  of 
leadership :  with  an  instinct  sure  and  no  doubt 
wise,  children  uniformly  give  their  suffrages  to  the 
fat,  and  vote  by  the  pound.  Now  she  looked 
longingly  at  the  bewitching  vision  of  her  opposite 
—  at  the  heavy  braids  of  chestnut  hair  hanging 
down  the  broad  back  and  tied  with  a  bit  of  blue- 
checked  ribbon  —  a  back  that  would  have  made 
three  of  her  backs.  One  day  while  being  dressed 
by  her  mother  she  had  remarked  regarding 
herself  that  she  was  glad  she  was  no  longer : 
she  might  be  taken  for  the  sea-serpent. 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  241 

Elsie  was  dressed  in  a  shade  of  brown  that 
suggested  a  blend  of  the  colors  of  good  morning 
coffee  with  Durham  cream  in  it  and  Kentucky 
waffles :  a  kind  of  general  breakfast  brown. 

Then  Elizabeth's  glance  came  home  to  Her 
bert  at  her  side.  He  was  dressed  hi  much  the 
same  shade  of  brown.  But  something  in  his 
nature  transmuted  this,  and  he  rather  seemed 
clad  in  a  raiment  that  suggested  spun  oak  leaves 
as  in  autumn  they  he  at  the  bottom  of  still 
pools  when  the  blue  of  the  sky  falls  on  them  and 
chill  winds  pass  low.  Her  tenderness  suddenly 
enfolded  him :  it  was  the  first  tune  he  had  ever 
come  to  stay  all  night:  it  gave  her  an  intimate 
sense  of  proprietorship  in  him.  She  settled  down 
into  her  chair  —  the  large,  high-backed,  parental 
chair  —  and  began  rather  plaintively  —  but  also 
not  without  stratagem  —  having  first  looked 
quickly  to  see  that  Elsie  was  at  a  safe  distance  :  — 

"Mamma  says  that  if  you  have  red  hair 
and  are  born  ugly,  and  grow  uglier,  and  are  very 
thin,  and  are  named  Elizabeth,  and  no  one  loves 
you,  you  may  become  a  very  dangerous  person. 
She's  positive  that  was  the  trouble  with  Queen 
Elizabeth.  Some  day  it  may  be  natural  for 
me  to  want  to  cut  off  somebody's  head  —  I 
don't  know  who's  yet  —  but  somebody's. 
Mamma  and  I  are  alike :  if  we  were  not  loved, 
it  would  be  the  end  of  us." 


242        THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

(To  think  that  even  this  innocent  child  should 
have  had  such  guile  !)  A  head  of  chestnut  hair 
was  unexpectedly  moved  around  in  front  of 
Elizabeth's  glasses  and  a  pair  of  eyes  peeped 
in  through  those  private  windows  :  peeped  — 
disappeared.  From  the  other  chair  a  voice 
sounded,  becoming  confidential :  — 

"Some  time  before  you  are  grown,  Elizabeth, 
some  one  is  going  to  tell  you  something." 

"I  wish  I  knew  what  it  was  now ! "  murmured 
Elizabeth. 

"You  will  know  when  the  time  comes." 

"I  don't  see  why  the  time  doesn't  come 
now." 

"  Before  you  are  grown  ?  " 

"It's  the  same  thing  —  I  feel  grown  —  for 
the  moment !" 

Elizabeth  looked  around  again  to  see  where 
Elsie  was. 

"I'd  like  to  ask  you  a  question,  Elizabeth." 

"I  should  be  pleased  to  answer  the  question." 

"But  father  told  me  not  to  ask  any  questions : 
I  was  to  wait  till  I  got  back  home  and  ask  him." 

"I  think  that  is  very  strange!  Aren't  there 
questions  a  boy  can't  ask  his  father  ?  A  father 
wouldn't  be  the  right  one  to  answer.  You  must 
ask  the  one  who  can  answer  !" 

There  was  no  reply. 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  243 

"Well,"  urged  Elizabeth,  feeling  the  time 
was  short  (there  have  been  others!),  "if  you  can't 
ask  it,  pop  it !  If  you  can't  ask  the  question, 
pop  the  question. " 

And  then  —  clandestinely  down  behind  the 
backs  of  the  chairs  !  And  not  on  the  cheek ! 
Exact  style  of  the  respondent  not  accurately 
known  —  probably  early  Elizabethan. 

Toward  the  middle  of  the  afternoon  as  they 
played  further  about  the  room  in  search  of 
whatever  entertainment  it  afforded,  they 
stopped  before  an  old  cabinet  with  shelves 
arranged  behind  glass  doors. 

On  one  of  the  upper  shelves  stood  some  little 
oval  frames  of  blue  or  of  rose-colored  velvet ; 
and  in  the  frames  were  miniatures  of  women  of 
old  Southern  days  with  bare  ivory  necks  and 
shoulders  and  perhaps  a  big  damask  rose  on  the 
breast  or  pendent  in  a  cataract  of  curls  behind 
the  ear  :  women  who  made  you  think  what  must 
have  been  the  physical  and  mental  calibre  of 
the  men  who  had  captured  them  and  held  them 
captured:  Elizabeth's  grandmothers  and  aunts 
on  the  mother's  side.  The  two  girls,  each  with 
an  arm  around  the  other's  waist  and  heads  close 
together,  peered  through  the  glass  doors  at  the 
vital  dames. 

"Don't  they  look  as  though   they  liked  to 


244        THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

dance  and  to  eat  and  to  manage  everything  and 
everybody  ?  "  said  Elsie,  always  practical. 

"Don't  they  look  proud!"  said  Elizabeth 
proudly,  "and  true!  and  don't  they  look  alive!" 

But  she  linked  her  arm  in  Elsie's  and  drew 
her  away  to  something  else,  adding  in  delicate 
confidence:  "I  think  I  am  glad,  though,  Elsie, 
that  mamma  does  not  look  like  them.  There 
is  no  one  in  the  world  like  mamma  !  I  am  a  lit 
tle  like  her,  but  I  dwindled.  Children  do  dwindle 
nowadays,  don't  they?" 

" Not  I,"  said  Elsie.  "I  didn't  dwindle.  Do 
you  notice  any  dwindling  anywhere  about  me  ? 
Please  say  where." 

On  the  middle  and  lower  shelves  of  the  cabinet 
were  some  long-ago  specimens  _  of  mounted  wild 
duck;  and  on  the  moss-ragged  boughs  of  an 
artificial  oak  some  age-moulted  passenger  pig 
eons.  The  boys  talked  about  these,  and  told 
stories  of  then-  grandfathers'  hunting  days  when 
pigeons  in  multitudes  flecked  the  morning  sky 
on  frosty  mornings  or  had  made  blue  feathery 
clouds  about  the  oak  trees  in  the  vast  Kentucky 
pastures. 

Following  this  lead,  the  boys  went  to  the 
book-shelves,  and  taking  down  a  volume  of  Audu- 
bon's  great  folio  work  on  American  Birds,  they 
spread  it  open  on  the  carpet  and,  sprawling  be- 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  245 

fore  it,  found  the  picture  ,of  the  vanished  wild 
pigeon  there,  and  began  to  read  about  him. 

Observing  this,  Elizabeth  and  Elsie  took 
down  a  volume  of  the  same  great  man's  work 
on  American  Animals;  and  with  it  open  before 
them  on  the  floor  a  few  yards  away,  facing  the 
boys,  they  began  to  turn  the  pages,  looking 
indifferently  for  whatever  beasts  might  appear. 

Elizabeth's  peculiar  interest  in  animal  pictures 
had  begun  during  the  summer  previous,  when 
the  family  were  having  a  vacation  trip  in  Europe. 
Upon  her  visits  to  galleries  of  paintings  she 
had  repeatedly  encountered  the  same  picture: 
The  Manger  with  the  Divine  Child  as  the  centre 
of  the  group ;  and  about  the  Child,  half  in 
shadow,  the  donkey  and  others  of  his  lowly 
fellows  of  the  stall  —  all  turned  in  brute  adora 
tion.  The  memory  of  these  Christmas  pictures 
came  vividly  back  to  her  now —  especially  the 
face  of  the  donkey  who  was  always  made  to  look 
as  though  he  had  long  been  expecting  the  event ; 
and  whereas  reasonably  gratified,  could  not 
definitely  say  that  he  was  much  surprised :  his 
entire  aspect  being  that  of  a  creature  too  meek 
and  lowly  to  think  that  anything  foreseen  by  him 
could  possibly  be  much  of  a  miracle. 

Once  also  she  had  seen  another  animal  picture 
that  fascinated  her:  it  represented  a  blond- 


246         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS   EVE 

haired  little  girl  of  about  her  own  age,  with  bare 
feet,  hair  hanging  down,  a  palm  branch  in  her 
hand.  She  was  escorted  by  a  troop  of  wild 
animals,  each  vying  with  the  other  in  attempt 
to  convince  this  exceptional  little  girl  that 
nothing  could  induce  them  just  at  present  to  be 
carnivorous. 

The  most  dangerous  beasts  walked  at  the 
head  of  the  line;  the  less  powerful  took  their 
places  in  the  rear ;  and  the  procession  gradually 
tapered  off  in  the  distance  until  only  the  smallest 
creatures  were  to  be  seen  struggling  resolutely 
along  in  the  parade.  The  meaning  of  the  pic 
ture  seemed  to  be  that  nothing  harmful  could 
come  from  the  animal  kingdom  on  this  particu 
lar  day,  providing  the  animals  were  allowed  to 
arrange  themselves  as  specified  in  the  procession. 
What  might  have  happened  on  the  day  pre 
ceding  or  the  day  following  was  not  guaranteed ; 
nor  what  might  have  befallen  the  little  girl  on 
this  day  if  she  had  not  been  a  blonde ;  nor  what 
might  overtake  little  boys,  dark  or  fair,  at  any 
time.  This  picture  also  was  in  Elizabeth's 
memory  as  she  turned  Audubon's  mighty  pages  ; 
but  somehow  no  American  animals  seemed  to 
be  represented  in  it :  probably  absenting  them 
selves  through  the  American  desire  —  ranging 
through  the  whole  animal  kingdom  —  not  to 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  247 

appear  sentimental.  All,  no  doubt,  would  have 
been  glad  to  parade  behind  Elizabeth;  but 
they  must  have  agreed  that  only  the  sheep  in 
the  United  States  has  the  right  to  look  sheepish. 

The  boys,  sitting  behind  the  Birds,  and  the 
girls  sitting  behind  the  Quadrupeds,  turned  the 
leaves  and  began  to  toss  their  comments  and 
their  fun  back  and  forth. 

"The  wild  pigeon  is  gone,"  said  Harold,  whose 
ideas  on  this  subject  and  others  related  to  it 
showed  that  he  had  listened  with  a  good  purpose 
to  a  father  who  was  a  naturalist  and  patriotic 
American.  "  The  wild  pigeon  is  gone,  and  the 
buffalo  is  gone,  and  the  deer  is  going,  and  all  the 
other  big  game  is  gone  or  is  going,  and  the  birds 
are  going,  and  the  forests  are  going,  and  the 
streams  are  going,  and  the  Americans  are  going : 
everything  is  going  but  the  immigrants  —  they 
are  coming." 

"Oh,  but,  Harold,  we  were  immigrants  once," 
admitted  Elizabeth. 

"We  were  Anglo-Saxon  immigrants,"  said 
the  son  of  his  father ;  "and  they're  the  only  kind 
for  this  country.  If  all  the  rest  of  the  country 
were  like  Kentucky,  it  wouldn't  be  so  bad.  And 
we  American  boys  have  got  to  get  busy  when  we 
are  men,  or  there  won't  be  any  real  Americans 
left :  I  expect  to  stand  for  a  big  family,  I  do," 


248        THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

he  affirmed  to  Herbert  as  though  he  somehow 
appropriated  the  privilege  and  the  glory  of  it. 

"So  do  I  intend  to  stand  for  a  big  family," 
replied  Herbert  quickly  and  jealously,  now  that 
matters  seemed  to  be  on  a  satisfactory  basis 
with  Elizabeth. 

"We  boys  are  going  to  do  our  part,"  called 
out  the  Anglo-Saxon  to  the  girls  sitting  opposite. 
"You  American  girls  will  have  to  do  yours  !" 
;  "We  shall  be  quite  ready,"  Elizabeth  sang 
back  dreamily. 

"We  shall  be  ready,"  echoed  Elsie,  not  to  be 
excluded  from  her  full  share  in  future  proceed 
ings,  "and  we  shall  be  much  pleased  to  be 
ready!" 

The  boys  turning  the  pages  of  the  Birds  had 
reached  the  picture  of  the  American  robin  red 
breast;  and  the  girls  turning  the  pages  of  the 
Quadrupeds  had  reached  the  picture  of  the 
American  rabbit ;  Elizabeth  was  softly  stroking 
its  ears  and  coat. 

"I  think,"  said  Herbert,  looking  across  at 
Elizabeth,  and  also  of  that  cordial  lusty  house 
hold  bird  whose  picture  was  before  him,  "I 
think  that  if  a  real  American  were  to  begin  at 
twenty  and  keep  on  until  he  was,  say,  ninety, 
he'd  be  able  to  down  the  immigrants  with  a 
family." 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  249 

"Why  ninety?7'  inquired  Elizabeth,  looking 
tenderly  back  at  him  and  apparently  disturbed 
by  the  fixing  of  an  arbitrary  limit. 

" That's  all  the  Bible  allows;  then  you  take  a 
rest." 

"Oh,  then  our  family  didn't  want  any  rest," 
exclaimed  Harold;  "for  grandfather  had  a 
child  when  he  was  ninety-one :  isn't  that  so, 
Elizabeth?" 

"Oh,  Harold!  You've  got  that  wrong.  It 
wasn't  grandmother,  you  dear  lamb  !  Wasn't 
it  a  woman  in  the  Old  Testament  —  Sarah  —  or 
Hagar  —  or  maybe  Rebecca  ?" 

"  Anyhow,  I'm  right  about  grandfather  !  I'm 
positive  he  had  one.  Hurrah  for  grandfather ! 
He  was  the  right  kind  of  American!  When 
I'm  a  man,  I'll  be  the  right  kind:  I'D  have 
the  largest  family  hi  this  neighborhood." 

"  Don't  say  that !    Take  that  back  ! " 

"  I-  will  say  it,  and  I  do  say  it !" 

"Then  —  take  —  that!" 

The  member  of  the  military  institute  received 
a  slap  in  the  mouth  from  a  masculine  overgrown 
hand  which  caused  him  to  measure  the  length 
of  his  spine  backward  on  a  large  damask  rose 
in  the  velvet  carpet. 

They  fought  as  two  young  males  should,  one 
of  whom  had  recently  imagined  himself  the  last 


250         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

of  the  Saxon  kings  and  the  other  of  whom  had 
realized  himself  as  an  accepted  lover.  They 
fought  for  a  moment  over  the  priceless  folio 
of  Audubon  and  ruined  those  open  pages  where 
the  robin,  family-bird  of  the  yards,  had  inno 
cently  brought  on  the  fray.  They  fought  round 
the  room,  past  furniture  and  over  it :  Elsie  follow 
ing  with  delight  and  wishing  that  each  would  be 
well  punished;  Elizabeth  following  in  despair, 
broken-hearted  lest  either  should  be  worsted. 

"The  idea  of  two  brats  fighting  over  which 
is  going  to  have  the  largest  family !"  cried  the 
former. 

"Oh,  Harold,  Harold,  Harold!"  implored 
Elizabeth.  "To  fight  in  your  own  house!'7 

"Where  could  I  fight  if  I  didn't  fight  in  my 
own  house?"  shouted  the  Saxon.  "I  couldn't 
fight  in  his." 

"Yes;  you  can  fight  in  mine  —  whenever 
you've  a  mind!"  shouted  his  hospitable  foe. 

Then  something  intervened  —  miraculously. 
The  boys  had  reached  the  farther  end  of  the 
library  and  the  locked  doors.  There  they  had 
clinched  again,  and  there  they  went  down  side- 
wise  with  a  heavy  fall  against  those  barriers. 
As  they  started  to  their  feet  to  close  in  again, 
the  miracle  took  place  —  a  real  miracle,  and 
most  appropriate  to  Christmas  Eve.  In  the 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  251 

Middle  Ages  such  a  miracle  would  have  given 
rise  to  a  legend,  a  saint,  a  shrine,  and  relics. 

Elizabeth,  who  had  hung  upon  the  edge  of 
battle,  was  the  first  to  see  it.  As  her  brother 
rose,  she  threw  herself  upon  him  and  whispered  : 

"Oh,  look,  Harold  !     Now  you'll  stop  I" 

Through  the  large  empty  keyhole  of  the 
locked  doors  an  object  was  making  its  way : 
first  one  long  green  finger  appeared,  and  then  a 
second,  and  then  a  third — those  three  sacred 
fingers  —  as  old  as  Buddha  !  They  made  their 
way  into  the  air  of  the  library,  followed  by  a 
foot  or  more  of  timber ;  and  the  fingers  and  arm 
taken  together  constituted  a  broken-off  bough 
of  the  Christmas  Tree :  sign  of  peace  and  good 
will  on  earth  on  that  Eve :  a  true  modern 
miracle ! 

But  the  member  of  the  military  institute  did 
not  see  it  in  that  light ;  what  it  suggested  to 
him  was  the  memory  of  certain  green  twigs  that 
in  earlier  years  had  played  stingingly  around 
a  pair  of  bare  disobedient  legs  —  wanton  dis 
turbers  of  common  household  peace ;  and  as  he 
stood  there  remembering,  his  recollection  was 
further  assisted  by  certain  minatory  movements 
of  the  sacred  bough  itself  in  the  keyhole  —  a 
reminder  that  the  same  hand  was  now  at  the 
end  of  the  switch.  It  was  not  the  miraculous 


252         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

that  persuaded  him:  it  was  the  much  too 
natural !  But  then  is  not  the  natural  in  such 
a  case  miraculous  enough?  To  take  a  small 
green  cylinder  of  vegetable  tissue  and  apply  it 
to  a  larger  unclad  cylinder  of  animal  tissue,  with 
a  spasmodic  contraction  of  muscular  tissue,  and 
get  a  moral  result  from  the  gray  matter  of  the 
distant  brain :  is  not  that  miraculous  enough  ? 
If  people  must  hunt  for  miracles  and  must  have 
them,  can  they  not  find  all  they  want  in  the 
natural  ? 

There  was  stillness  in  the  library  as  that  green 
bough  slowly  disappeared.  The  rabbit  and 
the  robin,  the  latter  badly  torn,  got  put  back 
upon  the  shelves  in  their  respective  volumes. 
And  presently  there  was  nothing  more  to  be 
seen  but  four  laughing  children. 

And  now  it  was  getting  late.  Outside  and 
all  over  the  land  snow  was  falling  —  the  longed- 
for  snow  of  Christmas  Eve.  And  the  last  thing 
to  chronicle  regarding  the  afternoon  was  a 
reading. 

The  little  gray-toned  lad  with  the  mop  of 
whitish  hair  and  the  profile  of  white  flint  had 
straggled  back  to  the  story  which  had  absorbed 
him  earlier  that  day  —  The  Book  of  the  World's 
Great  Battles ;  and  he  had  read  to  his  listeners 
seated  around  him  the  story  of  the  sad  battle 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  253 

of  Hastings  when  Saxon  Harold  fell,  and  green 
Saxon  England  with  its  mighty  throne  was  lost 
to  fair-haired  Saxon  men  and  women  —  for  a 
long,  sad  time. 

This  boy  was  living  very  close  to  the  mind 
of  a  father  who  was  watching  the  history  of  his 
country;  and  his  own  brain  was  full  of  small 
echoes,  which  perhaps  did  not  echo  very  fully 
and  truly. 

"That  is  the  kind  of  battle  we  are  going 
to  fight,"  he  said.  " England  had  to  fight  her 
immigrants,  and  we  some  day  shall  have  to  fight 
our  immigrants  !  Because  they  will  bring  into 
our  country  old  things  from  their  old  countries, 
and  we  won't  have  those  old  things.  They  are 
the  ones  that  brought  in  this  silly  old  Santa 
Glaus," 

"If  there  is  a  war,"  said  the  son  of  the  doctor, 
"HI  be  the  surgeon;  and  I  know  of  two  salves 
already  —  one  for  wounds  that  are  open  and 
one  for  wounds  that  might  as  well  be.  It's  a 
salve  that  father  got  in  France;  and  they  may 
have  used  it  at  the  battle  of  Waterloo ;  that's 
why  there  were  so  many  soldiers  limping  around 
afterwards." 

"Well,  Herbert,"  said  Elsie,  "it  couldn't  have 
been  such  a  wonderful  salve  if  it  set  everybody 
to  limping. " 


254         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"Well,  it  is  either  limp  or  be  dead :  so  they 
limped." 

"  What  I  like  about  the  French/'  said  Harold, 
remembering  a  summer  spent  in  France,  "is  the 
big  red  breeches  on  the  soldiers :  then  you've 
got  the  gore  on  you  all  the  time,  whether  you're 
fighting  or  not." 

Elizabeth's  mild  beam  of  humor  saw  a  chance 
to  shine :  — 

"Oh,  but,  Harold,"  she  exclaimed,  "they  are 
so  dangerous  !  You  know  the  towns  were  full 
of  soldiers,  and  there  wasn't  one  in  the  country. 
If  a  soldier  is  seen  in  the  pastures,  the  French 
bulls  get  after  them  !  Blue  is  better :  then  you 
aren't  chased  !" 

It  had  come  Elizabeth's  time  to  read.  She 
made  preparations  for  it  with  the  finest  sense  of 
how  beautiful  an  occasion  it  was  going  to  be : 
she  hunted  for  the  best  chairs ;  she  pushed  them 
together  near  one  of  the  windows  where  the 
last  afternoon  light  from  the  snow-darkened  sky 
began  to  fall  mystically;  then  she  went  to  the 
children's  corner  of  Fairy  Tales  and  softly 
peered  along  the  shelf;  and  she  drew  out  a 
well-remembered  volume.  Then,  seating  herself 
before  her  auditors,  she  began  in  the  sweetest, 
most  faltering  of  voices  to  read  a  story  that  in 
earlier  years  had  charmed  them  all. 


FOUR  IN  A  .CAGE  255 

She  had  scarcely  begun  before  she  discovered 
that  she  no  longer  had  an  audience :  nobody 
listened.  Saddest  of  all,  Elizabeth  found  that 
she  did  not  herself  listen :  she  could  no  longer 
draw  close  even  to  the  boundaries  of  that  once 
magical  world :  it  was  gone  from  her  and  now 
she  herself  loved  it  only  as  she  saw  it  in  the  dim 
distance  —  on  the  Elysian  Fields  of  lost  things. 

There  may  have  been  something  of  import 
to  the  future  of  this  nation  in  the  way  in  which 
these  four  country  children,  crowded  as  it  were 
on  a  narrow  headland  looking  toward  the  Past, 
there  said  good-by  for  the  last  tune  to  faith 
in  the  whole  literature  of  Fairy  Land.  The 
splendid,  the  terrible  race  of  creatures  which 
once  had  peopled  the  world  of  imagination  for 
races. and  civilizations  had  now  crumbled  to  dust 
at  the  touch  of  those  little  minds.  For  in  the 
hard  white  light  of  our  New  World  backward, 
always  backward  toward  the  cradle  moves  the 
retreating  line  of  faith  in  the  old  superstitions : 
the  shadows  of  the  supernatural  retire  more 
and  more  toward  the  very  curtains  that  cradle 
infancy;  and  it  may  be  that  the  last  miracle 
of  fable  will  die  where  it  was  born  —  on  the  lips 
of  the  child. 

Elizabeth's  face  flamed  red  as  she  shut  the 
book.  It  was  dead  to  her;  but  her  brain  was 


256         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

musical  with  refrains  about  things  that  had  gone 
to  those  inner  Fields  of  hers ;  and  now  as  though 
she  felt  herself  just  a  little  alone  —  even  from 
Herbert  —  she  walked  away  to  the  piano  :  — 

"You  wouldn't  listen  to  the  story,  but  you'll 
have  to  listen  to  a  song  !  This  is  my  song  to  a 
Fairy  —  my  slumber  song  !  It  is  away  off  in 
the  woods,  and  I  go  all  by  myself  to  where  she 
is,  and  I  sing  this  song  to  her."  So  Elizabeth 
sang :  - 

"  Over  thee  bright  dews  be  shaken; 

On  thine  eyelids  violets  blow; 
At  thy  hand  white  stars  awaken; 
Past  thee  sun  and  darkness  go! 

"  In  the  world  where  thou  art  vanished, 

All  dear  things  are  ever  young. 
I  as  thou  will  soon  be  vanished, 
I  like  thee  from  nought  am  sprung. 

"Slumber,  slumber!  Why  awaken? 

No  one  now  believes  in  thee. 
I  shall  sleep  while  worlds  are  shaken  — 
No  one  will  believe  in  me." 

It  was  the  poorest,  most  faltering,  yet  most 
faithful  voice  —  the  mere  note  of  a  linnet  long 
before  the  singing  season  has  begun.  As  it  died 
out,  she  descended  from  her  premature  perch 
and  went  with  her  repudiated  book  to  the  shelves 
where  it  must  be  put  —  not  to  be  taken  down 


FOUR  IN  A  CAGE  257 

again.  In  the  shadow  of  the  library  and  with 
the  uncertainty  of  her  glasses,  she  fumbled  as 
she  sought  the  place,  and  the  volumes  on  each 
side  collapsed  together.  Whereupon  a  large  key 
slid  from  the  top  and  fell  to  the  floor.  With 
a  low  cry  of  delight  —  but  of  regret  also  —  she 
seized  it  and  held  it  up  :  — 

aOh,  Harold,  the  key  !    I  have  found  it !" 
As  the  others  hurried  to  her,  she  said  to  Elsie, 
as  though  boys  were  not  fine  enough  to  under 
stand  anything  so  fine  :  — 

"It  was  like  mamma  to  hide  the  key  there! 
She  gave  it  to  the  old  Christmas  stories  to  keep 
and  guard  I" 

Soon  after  this  the  children  were  not  seen  in 
the  room.  Some  one  came  for  them,  and  they 
were  made  ready  for  supper.  After  supper  they 
were  kept  well  guarded  in  another  part  of  the 
house;  and  at  an  earlier  hour  than  usual  the 
little  flock  were  herded  up-stairs  and  at  the  top 
divided  along  masculine  and  feminine  by-paths 
toward  drowsy  folds. 

No  lights  were  brought  into  the  room  where 
they  had  been  playing.  The  red  embers  of  the 
anthracite  sank  lower  under  their  ashes  :  all  was 
darkness  and  silence  for  the  mysteries  of  Christ 
mas  Eve. 


Ill 

THE   REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT 

A  QUARTER  of  a  century  ago  or  more  the 
German  Christmas  Tree  —  the  diffusion  of 
which  throughout  the  world  was  begun  soon 
after  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic  wars  —  had 
not  made  its  way  into  general  use  throughout  the 
rural  districts  of  central  Kentucky.  The  older 
Dutch  and  English  festivals  which  had  blent 
their  features  into  the  American  holiday  was  the 
current  form  celebrated  in  blue-grass  homes. 
The  German  forest-idea  had  been  adopted  in 
the  towns  for  churches  and  other  public  festivi 
ties  ;  and  in  private  houses  also  that  were  in  the 
van  of  the  world-movement.  But  out  in  the 
country  the  evergreen  had  not  yet  enriched  the 
great  winter  drama  of  Nature  with  its  fresh  note 
of  the  immortal  drawn  from  a  dead  world :  the 
evergreen  was  to  eyes  there  the  evergreen  still, 
as  the  primrose  to  other  eyes  had  been  the  prim 
rose  and  nothing  more. 

Thus  there  was  no  Christmas  Tree;  and 
Christmas  Eve  brought  no  joy  to  children  except 
258 


THE   REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT  259 

that  of  waiting  for  Christmas  morning.  Not 
until  they  went  to  sleep  or  feigned  slumber ;  not 
until  fires  died  down  hi  chimney-corners  where 
socks  and  stockings  hung  from  a  mantelpiece 
or  from  the  backs  of  maternal  and  paternal 
chairs  —  not  till  then  did  the  Sleigh  of  the  White 
World  draw  near  across  the  landscape  of  dark 
ness.  Out  of  its  realm  of  silence  and  snow  it 
was  suddenly  there  !  —  outside  the  house,  laden 
with  gifts,  drawn  by  tireless  reindeer  and  driven 
by  its  indefatigable  forest-god.  He  was  no 
longer  young,  the  driver,  as  was  shown  in  his  case, 
quite  as  it  is  shown  in  the  case  of  commoner  men, 
by  his  white  beard  and  round  ruddy  middle- 
aged  face ;  but  his  twinkling  eyes  and  fresh  good 
humor  showed  that  the  core  of  him  was  still 
boyish ;  and  apparently  the  one  great  lesson  he 
had  learned  from  half  a  lifetime  was  that  the  best 
service  he  could  render  the  whole  world  con 
sisted  in  giving  it  one  night  of  innocent  happi 
ness  and  kindness.  Not  until  well  on  toward 
midnight  was  he  there  at  the  house,  without 
sound  or  signal,  the  Sleigh  perhaps  halted  at 
the  front  gate  or  drawn  up  behind  aged  cedar 
trees  in  the  yard  ;  or  for  all  that  any  one  knew  to 
the  contrary,  resting  lightly  on  the  roof  of  the 
house  itself,  or  remaining  poised  up  in  the  air. 
At  least  on  the  roof  he  was :  he  peeked  down 


260         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  chimney  to  see  whether  the  fire  were  out 
(and  he  never  by  any  mistake  went  to  the  wrong 
chimney) :  then  he  scrambled  hurriedly  down. 
If  any  children  were  in  bed  in  the  room,  he  tickled 
the  soles  of  their  feet  to  prove  if  they  were 
asleep ;  then  crammed  socks  and  stockings ; 
dispersed  other  gifts  around  on  the  tops  of  fur 
niture;  left  his  smile  on  everything  to  last  a 
year  —  the  smile  of  old  forgiveness  and  of  new 
affection  —  and  was  up  the  chimney  again  — 
back  in  the  Sleigh  —  gone  !  Gone  to  the  next 
house,  then  to  the  next,  and  on  from  house  to 
house  over  the  neighborhood,  over  the  nation, 
over  the  world:  the  first  to  operate  without 
accidental  breakdown  the  heavier-than-air  ma 
chine,  unless  it  were  possibly  a  remote  American 
kinswoman  of  his,  the  New  England  witch  on 
her  broomstick  aeroplane :  which  however  she 
was  never  able  to  travel  on  outside  New  Eng 
land.  In  this  belting  of  the  globe  with  a  sleigh 
in  a  single  night  he  must  often  have  come  to 
rivers  and  mountain  ranges  where  passage  was 
impossible;  and  then  it  is  certain  that  the 
Sleigh  was  driven  up  to  the  roadway  of  the 
clouds  and  travelled  across  the  lonely  stretches 
of  the  snow  before  it  fell. 

Why  he  should  come  near  midnight  —  who 
ever  asked  such  a  question  ?    Has  not  that  hour 


THE   REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT  261 

always  been  the  natural  locality  and  resort  for 
the  supernatural  ?  What  things  merry  or  sorry 
could  ever  have  come  to  pass  but  for  the  stroke 
of  midnight?  How  could  Shakespeare  have 
written  certain  dramas  without  the  mere  aid 
of  twelve  o'clock  ?  What  considerable  part 
of  English  literature  would  drop  out  of  exist 
ence  but  for  the  fact  that  Big  Ben  struck 
twelve ! 

The  children  stood  at  the  head  of  the  stairs ; 
and  the  Great  Night  which  was  to  climb  so  high 
began  for  them  low  down  —  with  the  furniture. 
Standing  there,  they  listened  for  the  sound 
of  any  movement  in  the  house :  there  was  none, 
and  they  began  to  descend.  Stairways  in  home 
steads  built  as  solid  as  that  did  not  give  way 
with  any  creaking  of  timbers  under  the  pressure 
of  feet ;  and  they  were  thickly  carpeted.  Half 
way  down  the  children  leaned  over  the  banisters 
and  listened  again. 

Here  at  the  turning  of  the  stairway,  directly 
below,  there  lived  in  his  pointed  weather-house 
the  old  Time-Sentinel  of  the  family,  who  with 
his  one  remaining  arm  saluted  evermore  back 
ward  and  forward  in  front  of  his  stiff  form; 
and  at  every  swing  of  this  limb  you  could  hear 
his  muscle  crack  in  his  ancient  shoulder-joint. 
A  metallic  salute  which  the  children  had  been 


262        THE   DOCTOR'S   CHRISTMAS  EVE 

accustomed  to  all  their  lives  was  one  of  the  only 
two  sounds  that  now  reached  them. 

The  other  sound  came  from  near  him :  sitting 
on  the  hall  carpet  on  a  square  rug  of  tin  es 
pecially  provided  for  her  was  the  winter  com 
panion  of  the  time-piece  —  a  large  round  mica- 
plated  anthracite  stove  —  middle-aged,  design 
ing,  and  corpulent.  This  seeming  stove,  whose 
puffed  flushed  cheeks  now  reflected  an  unusual 
excitement,  gave  out  little  comfortable  wooing 
sounds,  all  confidential  and  travelling  in  a  soft 
volley  toward  the  sentinel,  backed  gaunt  and  taci 
turn  against  the  wall. 

The  children  of  the  house  had  long  ago  named 
this  pair  the  Cornered  Soldier  and  the  Marrying 
Stove ;  and  they  explained  the  positions  of  the 
two  as  indicating  that  the  stove  had  backed  the 
veteran  into  the  corner  and  had  sat  largely  down 
before  him  with  the  determination  to  remain 
there  until  she  had  warmed  him  up  to  the 
proper  response.  The  veteran  however  devoted 
his  existence  to  moving  his  arm  back  and  forth 
to  ward  off  her  infatuation,  and  meanwhile  he 
persisted  in  muttering  in  his  loudest  possible 
monotone  :  Go  away  —  keep  off!  Go  away  — 
keep  off!  Go  away  —  keep  off!  There  were 
seasons  of  course  when  the  stove  became  less 
ardent,  for  even  with  the  fibre  of  iron  such  pur- 


THE   REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT  263 

suits  must  relax  sometimes;  but  the  veteran 
never  permitted  his  arm  to  stop  waving,  trusting 
her  least  when  she  was  cold  —  rightly  enough  ! 

At  the  foot  of  the  stairway  they  encountered 
a  pan-  of  objects  that  were  genuinely  alive. 
Two  aged  setters  with  gentle  eyes  and  gentle  ears 
and  gentle  dispositions  rose  from  where  they  lay 
near  the  stove,  came  around,  and,  putting  then' 
feet  on  the  lowest  step,  stretched  themselves 
backward  with  a  low  bow,  and  then,  leaning 
forward  with  softly  wagging  tails,  they  pushed 
their  noses  against  the  two  children  of  the  house, 
inquiring  why  they  were  out  of  bed  at  that  un 
heard-of  hour  :  they  offered  their  services.  But 
being  shoved  aside,  they  returned  to  their 
places  and  threw  themselves  down  again  —  not 
curled  inward  with  chilliness,  but  flat  on  the  side 
with  noses  pointed  outward:  they  were  not 
wholly  reassured,  and  the  ear  of  one  was  thrown 
half  back,  leaving  the  auditory  channel  uncur 
tained  :  they  had  no  fear,  but  they  felt  solicitude. 

The  chilclren  made  then-  way  on  tiptoe  along 
the  hall  toward  the  door  of  the  library.  Having 
paused  there  and  listened,  they  entered  and 
groped  then*  way  to  the  far  end  where  the  ^doors 
connected  this  room  with  the  parlor.  As  they 
strained  their  ears  against  these  barriers,  low 
sounds  reached  them  from  the  other  side : 


264         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

smothered  laughter;  the  noise  of  things  being 
taken  out  of  papers ;  the  sound  of  feet  moving 
on  a  step-ladder ;  the  sagging  of  a  laden  bough 
as  it  touched  other  laden  boughs.  Through 
the  keyhole  there  streamed  into  the  darkness  of 
the  library  a  little  shaft  of  light. 

"They  are  in  there!  There  is  a  light  in 
the  room  !  They're  hanging  the  presents  on  ! 
We've  caught  them !" 

The  leader  of  the  group  was  about  to  insert 
the  key  when  suddenly  upon  the  intense  still 
ness  there  broke  a  sound ;  and  following  upon 
that  sound  what  a  chorus  of  noises  ! 

For  at  that  moment  the  old  house-sentinel 
struck  twelve  —  the  Christmas-Night  Twelve. 
The  children  had  never  heard  such  startling 
strokes  —  for  the  natural  reason  that  never 
before  had  they  been  awake  and  alone  at  that 
hour.  As  those  twelve  loud  clear  chimes  rang 
out,  the  two  other  guardians  of  the  house 
drowsing  by  the  clock,  apprehensive  after  all 
regarding  the  children  straying  about  in  the 
darkness  —  these  expressed  their  uneasiness  by 
a  few  low  gruff  barks,  and  one  followed  with  a 
long  questioning  howl  —  a  real  Christmas  ulula- 
tion !  Then  out  in  the  henhouse  a  superannu 
ated  rooster  drew  his  long-barrelled  single- 
shooter  out  of  its  feather  and  leather  case, 


THE   REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT  265 

cocked  it  and  fired  a  volley  point-blank  at  the 
rafters :  the  sound  seemed  made  up  of  drowsi 
ness,  a  sore  throat,  general  gallantry,  and  a 
notice  that  he  kept  an  eye  on  the  sun  even  when 
he  had  no  idea  where  it  was  —  the  early  Christ 
mas  clarion !  Further  away  in  the  barn  a 
motherly  cow,  kept  awake  by  the  swayings  and 
totterings  of  an  infant  calf  apparently  intoxi 
cated  on  new  milk,  stood  up  on  her  hind  feet 
and  then  on  her  fore  feet  and  mooed  —  quite  a 
Christmas  moo  !  In  a  near-by  stall  an  aged 
horse  who  now  seemed  to  recognize  what  was 
expected  of  him  on  the  occasion  struggled  to  his 
fore  feet  and  then  to  his  hind  feet,  and  squaring 
himself  nickered  —  his  best  Christmas  nicker  ! 
Under  some  straw  in  a  shed  a  litter  of  pigs,  dis 
posed  with  heads  and  tails  as  is  the  packing  of 
sardines  —  except  that  for  the  sardines  the  oil 
is  poured  on  the  general  outside,  but  for  the 
pigs  it  still  remained  on  the  individual  inside  — 
these  pigs  slept  on  —  the  proper  Christmas 
indifference  !  For  there  had  never  been  any 
holy  art  for  them  :  nor  miracles  of  their  manger : 
they  had  merely  been  good  enough  to  be  eaten, 
never  good  enough  to  be  painted  !  They  slept 
on  while  they  could  !  —  mindful  of  the  peril  of 
ancestral  boar's  head  and  of  the  modern  peril 
of  brains  for  breakfast  and  sausage  for  supper. 


266         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Then  on  the  hearthstone  of  the  library  itself 
not  far  from  where  the  children  were  huddled 
the  American  mouse  which  is  always  found  there 
on  Christmas  Eve  —  this  mouse,  coming  out 
and  seeing  the  children,  shrieked  and  scampered 

—  a  fine  Christmas  shriek !     Whereat  on  the 
opposite  side  of  the  hearth  a  cricket  stopped 
chirping  and  dodged  over  the  edge  of  the  brick 

—  a  clever  Christmas  dodge ! 

All  these  leaving  what  a  stillness  ! 

As  noiselessly  as  possible  the  key  was  now 
inserted,  the  lock  turned,  and  the  door  thrown 
quickly  open ;  and  there  on  the  threshold  of 
the  forbidden  room,  the  children  gasped  — 
baffled  —  gazing  into  total  darkness  !  The  coals 
of  mystery  forever  glow  even  under  the  ashes  in 
the  human  soul ;  and  these  coals  now  sent  up  in 
faint  wavering  flashes  of  a  burnt-out  faith  :  they 
were  like  the  strange  delicate  wavering  Northern 
lights  above  a  frozen  horizon  :  after  all  —  in  the 
darkness  —  amid  the  hush  of  the  house  —  at 
the  hour  of  midnight  —  with  the  perfume  of 
wonderful  things  wafted  thickly  to  their  sense — 
after  all,  was  there  not  some  truth  in  the  Legend  ? 

Then  out  of  that  perfumed  darkness  a  voice 
sounded :  "Come  in  if  you  wish  to  come  in !" 

And  the  voice  was  wonderful,  big,  deep,  merry, 
kind  —  as  though  it  had  but  one  meaning,  the 


THE  REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT  267 

love  of  the  earth's  children  ;  it  betokened  al 
mighty  justice  and  impartiality  to  children. 
And  it  betrayed  no  surprise  or  resentment  at 
being  intruded  upon.  After  a  while  it  invited 
more  persuasively:  "Come  in  if  you  wish  to 


come  in." 


And  this  time  it  seemed  not  so  much  to  pro 
ceed  from  near  the  Tree  as  to  emanate  from  the 
Tree  itself  —  to  be  the  Tree  speaking  ! 

The  children  of  the  house  at  once  understood 
that  the  nature  of  their  irruption  had  shifted. 
Their  father  in  that  disguised  voice  was  issuing 
instructions  that  they  were  not  to  dare  question 
the  ancient  Christmas  rites  of  the  house,  nor 
attack  his  sacred  office  in  them.  For  this  hour 
he  was  still  to  be  the  Santa  Claus  of  childish 
faith.  Since  they  did  not  believe,  they  must 
make-believe  !  The  scene  had  instantly  been 
turned  into  a  house  miracle-drama :  and  they 
were  as  in  a  theatre :  and  they  were  to  witness 
a  play !  And  the  voice  did  not  hesitate  an 
instant  in  its  exaction  of  obedience,  but  at  once 
entered  upon  the  role  of  a  supernatural  per 
sonage  :  — 

"Was  I  mistaken?  Were  not  children  heard 
whispering  on  the  other  side  of  a  door,  and  was 
not  the  door  unlocked  and  thrown  open  ?  They 
must  be  there !  If  they  are  gone,  I  am  sorry. 


268         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

If  they  are  still  there  —  you  children !  I'm 
glad  to  see  you.  Though  of  course  I  don't  see 
you!" 

"  We're  glad  to  see  you  —  though  we  don't 
see  you!" 

"You  came  just  in  time.  I  was  about  going. 
What  delayed  me  —  but  strange  things  have 
happened  to-night !  As  I  drove  up  to  this 
house,  suddenly  the  life  seemed  to  go  out  of  me. 
It  was  never  so  before.  And  as  I  stepped  out 
of  the  Sleigh,  I  felt  weary  and  old.  And  the 
moment  I  left  the  reins  on  the  dashboard,  my 
reindeer,  which  were  trembling  with  fright  of  a 
new  kind,  fled  with  the  Sleigh.  And  now  I  am 
left  without  knowing  when  and  how  I  shall  get 
away.  But  on  a  night  like  this  wonderful  things 
happen ;  and  I  may  get  some  signal  from  them. 
A  frightened  horse  will  run  away  from  its  dis 
mounted  master  and  then  come  back  to  him. 
And  they  may  come  for  me.  I  may  get  a  signal. 
I  shall  wait.  But  as  I  said,  I  feel  strangely  life 
less  :  and  I  think  I  shall  sit  down.  Will  you 
sit  down,  please?  Where  you  are,  since  you 
cannot  see  any  chairs,"  he  said  with  the  sweetest 
gayety. 

In  the  darkness  there  were  the  sounds  of 
laughing  delighted  children  —  grouping  them 
selves  on  the  floor. 


THE   REALM  OF  MIDNIGHT  269 

"Now,"  said  the  voice,  "I  think  I'll  come 
around  to  your  side  of  the  Tree  so  that  there'll 
be  nothing  between  us  !" 

He  was  coming  —  coming  as  the  white-haired 
Winter-god,  Forest-spirit,  of  the  earth's  chil 
dren  !  They  heard  him  advance  around  from 
behind  the  Tree,  moving  to  the  right ;  and  one 
of  them  who  possessed  the  most  sensitive  hearing 
felt  sure  that  another  personage  advanced  more 
softly  around  from  behind  the  Tree,  on  the  left 
side.  However  this  may  be,  all  heard  him  sit 
down,  heard  the  boughs  rustle  about  him  as  he 
worked  his  thick  jolly  figure  back  under  them 
until  they  must  have  hung  about  his  neck  and 
down  over  his  eyes :  then  he  laughed  out  as 
though  he  had  taken  his  seat  on  his  true  Forest 
Throne. 

"When  I  am  at  home  hi  my  own  country,"  he 
said,  "I  am  accustomed  to  sleep  with  my  back 
against  an  evergreen.  I  believe  in  your  lands  you 
prefer  pine  furniture  :  I  like  the  whole  tree." 

A  tender  voice  put  forth  an  unexpected  ques 
tion  :  — 

"Are  you  sure  that  there  is  not  some  one  with 
you?"  ' 

"Is  not  that  a  strange  question?" 

"Ah  yes,  but  in  the  old  story  when  St.  Nicholas 
arrived,  an  angel  came  with  him :  are  you  right 


270         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

sure  there's  not  an  angel  in  the  room  with  you 
now?" 

"I  certainly  see  no  angel,  though  I  think  I  hear 
the  voice  of  one !  Do  you  see  any  angel?" 

"With  my  mind's  eye." 

"That  must  be  the  very  best  eye  with  which 
to  see  an  angel !" 

"But  if  there  were  a  light  in  the  room  —  !" 

"Pardon  me  !  If  there  were  a  light,  I  might 
not  be  here  myself.  If  you  changed  the  world 
at  all,  you  would  change  it  altogether." 

A  bolder  voice  broke  in  :  — 

"You're  a  very  mysterious  person,  are  you 
not?" 

"Not  more  mysterious  than  you,  I  should 
say.  Is  there  anything  more  mysterious  than 
one  of  you  children?" 

"Oh,  but  that's  a  different  kind  of  mysterious: 
we  don't  pretend  to  be  mysterious :  you  do!" 

"Oh,  do  I !  You  seem  to  know  more  about 
me  than  I  know  about  myself.  When  you  have 
lived  longer,  you  may  not  feel  so  certain  about 
understanding  other  people.  But  then  I'm  not 
people,"  he  added  joyously,  and  they  heard 
him  push  his  way  further  back  under  the  boughs 
of  the  Tree  —  withdrawing  more  deeply  into 
its  mystery. 

"Now  then,  while  I  wait,  what  shall  we  do  ?" 


IV 

TIME-SPIRIT  AND  ETERNAL  SPIRIT 

A  HURRIED  whispering  began  among  the  chil 
dren,  and  the  result  was  quickly  announced :  — 

"We  should  like  to  ask  you  some  questions." 
Evidently  the  intention  was  that  questions 
should  riddle  him  —  make  reasonable  daylight 
shine  through  his  mysterious  pretensions :  on 
the  stage  of  his  own  theatre  he  was  to  be 
stripped. 

"I  treat  all  children  alike,"  he  replied  with 
immediate  insistence  on  his  divine  rights.  ' '  And 
if  any  could  ask,  all  should  ask.  But  suppose 
every  living  child  asked  me  a  question.  That 
would  be  at  least  a  million  to  every  hair  on  my 
head :  don't  you  think  that  would  make  any 
head  a  little  heavy?  Besides,  I've  always 
gotten  along  so  well  all  over  the  world  because 
I  have  done  what  I  had  to  do  and  have  never 
stopped  to  talk.  As  soon  as  you  begin  to  talk, 
don't  you  get  into  trouble  —  with  somebody  ? 
Who  has  ever  forced  a  word  out  of  me  !" 

271 


272         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

How  alert  he  was,  nimble,  brisk,  alive  !  A 
marvellous  kind  of  mental  arctic  light  from  him 
began  to  spread  through  the  pitchiness  of  the 
room  as  from  a  sun  hidden  below  the  horizon. 

"But  everything  seems  going  to  pieces  to 
night,"  he  continued;  "and  maybe  I  might  let 
my  silence  go  to  pieces  also.  Your  request  is 
granted  —  but — remember,  one  question  apiece 
—  the  first  each  thinks  of  —  and  not  quarrel 
some  :  this  is  no  night  for  quarrelsome  ques 
tions!" 

The  lot  of  asking  the  first  fell  naturally  to 
Elsie,  and  her  question  had  her  history  back  of 
it ;  the  question  of  each  had  life-history. 

When  Elsie  first  came  to  know  about  the 
mysterious  Gift-bringer  from  the  North,  she 
promptly  noticed  in  her  sharp  way  that  he  was 
already  old;  nor  thereafter  did  he  grow  older. 
She  found  pictures  of  him  taken  generations 
before  she  was  born  —  and  there  he  was  just  as 
old  !  She  judged  him  to  be  about  fifty-five  years 
or  sixty  as  compared  with  middle-aged  Kentucky 
farmers,  some  of  whom  were  heavy-set  men  like 
him  with  florid  complexions,  and  with  snow  on 
their  beards  and  hair,  and  mischievous  eyes  and 
the  same  high  spirits.  Only,  there  was  one  who 
had  no  spirits  at  all  except  the  very  lowest. 
This  was  a  deacon  of  the  country  church,  who 


TIME-SPIRIT  AND  ETERNAL  SPIRIT      273 

instead  of  giving  presents  to  the  children  once  a 
year  pushed  a  long-handled  box  at  them  every 
Sunday  and  tried  to  force  them  to  make  presents 
to  him  !  One  hot  morning  of  early  summer  — 
he  had  so  annoyed  her  —  when  the  box  again 
paused  tantalizingly  in  front  of  her,  she  had 
shot  out  a  plump  little  hand  and  dropped  into 
it  a  frantic  indignant  June  bug  which  presently 
raised  a  hymn  for  the  whole  congregation.  She 
hated  the  deacon  furthermore  because  he  re 
sembled  Santa  Glaus,  and  she  disliked  Santa 
Glaus  because  he  resembled  the  deacon :  she 
held  them  responsible  for  resembling  each  other. 
All  this  was  long  ago  in  her  short  life,  but  the 
ancient  grudge  was  still  lodged  in  her  mind, 
and  it  now  came  out  in  her  question :  — 

"Why  did  you  wait  to  get  old  before  you 
began  to  bring  presents  to  children ;  why  didn't 
you  bestir  yourself  earlier ;  and  what  were  you 
doing  all  the  years  when  you  were  young  ?  " 

If  you  could  have  believed  that  trees  laughed, 
you  would  have  said  that  the  Christmas  Fir 
was  laughing  now. 

"That  is  a  very  good  question,  but  it  is  not 
very  simple,  I  am  sorry  to  say ;  and  by  my  word 
I  am  bound  not  to  answer  it ;  you  were  told  that 
the  question  must  be  simple  !  However,  I  am 
willing  to  make  you  a  promise :  I  do  not  know 


274         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

where  I  may  be  next  year,  but  wherever  you  are, 
you  will  receive,  I  hope,  a  little  book  called 
Santa  Claus  in  the  Days  of  his  Youth.  I  hope 
you  will  find  your  question  answered  there  to 
your  satisfaction.  And  now  —  for  the  next." 

During  the  years  of  Elizabeth's  belief  in  the 
great  Legend  of  the  North,  second  to  her  delight 
in  the  coming  of  the  gifts  was  sorrow  at  the  going 
of  them.  Every  year  an  avalanche  of  beautiful 
things  flowed  downward  over  the  world,  across 
mountain  ranges,  across  valleys  and  rivers ;  and 
each  house  chimney  received  its  share  from  the 
one  vast  avalanche.  Every  year !  And  for  all 
she  knew  these  avalanches  had  been  in  motion 
thousands  of  years.  But  where  were  the  gifts? 
Gone,  melted  away;  so  that  there  were  now 
no  more  at  the  end  of  time  than  there  had  been 
at  the  beginning.  The  fate  of  the  vanished  lay 
tenderly  over  the  landscape  of  the  world  for  her. 

"You  say  that  one  night  of  every  winter  you 
drive  round  the  earth  in  your  sleigh,  carrying 
presents.  Every  summer  don't  you  disguise 
yourself  and  drive  over  the  same  track  in  an 
old  cart  and  gather  them  up  again  ?  Many  a 
summer  day  I  have  watched  you  without  your 
knowing  it !" 

This  time  you  could  have  believed  that  if 
evergreens  are  sensitive,  the  fir  now  stood  with 


TIME-SPIRIT  AND  ETERNAL  SPIRIT      275 

its  boughs  lowered  a  little  pensively  and  very 
still. 

"I  am  sorry  !  The  question  violates  the  same 
mischief-making  rule,  and  by  my  word  I  am 
bound  not  to  answer  it.  But  it  is  as  easy  to  give 
a  promise  to  two  as  to  one ;  next  year  I  hope  you 
will  receive  a  little  book  called  Santa  Claus  with 
the  Wounded  and  the  Lost.  And  I  wish  you  joy 
in  that  story.  Now  then  I" 

"Father  told  me  not  to  ask  any  questions 
while  I  was  over  here :  to  wait  and  ask  him." 

The  little  theatre  of  make-believe  almost 
crumbled  to  its  foundations  beneath  that  one 
touch  of  reality !  The  great  personage  of  the 
drama  lost  control  of  his  resources  for  a  moment. 
Then  the  little  miracle-play  was  successfully 
resumed : — 

"Well,  then,  I  won't  have  to  answer  any  ques 
tions  for  you !" 

"But  I  can  tell  you  what  I  was  going  to  ask ! 
I  was  going  to  ask  you  if  you  are  married.  And 
if  you  are,  why  you  travel  always  without  your 
wife.  I  was  wondering  whether  you  didn't  like 
your  wife  !" 

The  answer  came  like  a  blinding  flash  —  like  a 
flash  meant  to  extinguish  another  flash :  — 

"A  book,  a  book !  Another  book !  There 
will  have  to  be  another  book  !  Look  out  for  one 


276         THE  DOCTOR'S   CHRISTMAS  EVE 

next  Christmas,  dropped  down  the  chimney 
especially  for  you :  and  I  hope  it  won't  fall  into 
the  fire  or  into  the  soot  —  Santa  Claus  and  his 
Wife.  Now  then  —  time  flies  !" 

During  the  infantile  years  when  the  heir  of  the 
house  had  been  a  believer  in  the  figure  beside  the 
Tree,  there  had  always  been  one  point  he  jeal 
ously  weighed :  whether  children  of  white  com 
plexion  were  not  entitled  to  a  larger  share  of 
Christmas  bounty  than  those  of  red  or  yellow 
or  brown  or  black  faces;  and  in  particular 
whether  among  all  white  children  those  native 
to  the  United  States  ought  not  to  receive  highest 
consideration.  The  old  question  now  rang  out: 

"What  do  you  think  of  the  immigrants?" 

The  Tree  did  not  exactly  laugh  aloud,  but  it 
certainly  laughed  all  over  —  with  hearty  whole 
some  approving  laughter. 

"That  question  is  the  worst  offender  of  all ;  it 
is  quarrelsome !  It  is  the  most  quarrelsome 
question  that  could  be  asked.  What  are  immi 
grants  to  me?  But  next  year  look  out  for  a 
book  called  Santa  Claus  on  Immigrants." 

"Put  plenty  of  gore  in  it !" 

"Gore!  Gore  on  Christmas  Eve!  But  if 
there  was  gore,  since  it  is  in  a  book,  it  would  have 
to  be  dry  gore.  But  wouldn't  salve  be  better  — 
salve  for  old  wounds?" 


TIME-SPIRIT  AND   ETERNAL  SPIRIT      277 

"If  you're  going  to  put  salve  in,  you  might 
use  my  Waterloo  salve  !" 

"  Don't  be  peculiar,  Herbert  —  especially 
away  from  home  !" 

Certainly  the  Tree  was  shaken  with  laughter 
this  time. 

"See  what  things  grow  to  when  once  started ; 
here  were  four  questions,  and  now  they  fill  four 
books.  But  time  flies.  Now  I  must  make 
haste  !  My  reindeer  !  — " 

His  ingenuity  was  evidently  at  work  upon 
this  pretext  as  perhaps  furnishing  him  later  on 
a  way  through  which  he  might  effect  his  escape  : 
in  this  little  theatre  of  thin  illusion  there  must 
be  some  rear  exit;  and  through  this  he  hoped 
to  retire  from  the  stage  without  losing  his  dig 
nity  and  the  illusion  of  his  role. 

"My  reindeer,"  he  insisted,  holding  fast  to 
that  clew  for  whatsoever  it  might  lead  him  to, 
"if  they  should  rush  by  for  me,  I  must  be  ready. 
A  faint  distant  signal  —  and  I'm  gone  !  So  be 
fore  I  go,  in  return  for  your  questions  I  am  going 
to  ask  you  one.  But  first  there  is  a  little  story 
—  my  last  story;  and  I  beg  you  to  listen  to  it." 

After  a  pause  he  began :  — 
"Listen,  you  children  !    You  children  of  this 
house,  you  children  of  the  world ! 


278        THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

"You  love  the  snow.  You  play  in  it,  you 
hunt  in  it ;  it  brings  the  melody  of  sleigh-bells, 
it  gives  white  wings  to  the  trees  and  new  robes 
to  the  earth.  Whenever  it  falls  on  the  roof  of 
this  house  and  in  the  yard  and  upon  the  farm, 
sooner  or  later  it  vanishes;  it  is  forever  rising 
and  falling,  forming  and  melting  —  on  and  on 
through  the  ages. 

"If  you  should  start  from  your  home  to-night 
and  travel  northward,  after  a  while  you  would 
find  everything  steadily  changing:  the  atmos 
phere  growing  colder,  living  creatures  begin 
ning  to  be  left  behind,  those  that  remain  be 
ginning  to  look  white,  the  voices  of  the  earth 
beginning  to  die  out :  color  fading,  song  failing. 
As  you  journeyed  on  always  you  would  be 
travelling  toward  the  silent,  the  white,  the  dead. 
And  at  last  you  would  come  to  a  land  of  no  sun 
and  of  all  silence  except  the  noise  of  wind  and 
ice;  you  would  have  entered  the  kingdom  of 
eternal  snow. 

"If  from  your  home  you  should  start  south 
ward,  as  you  crossed  land  after  land  in  the  same 
way,  you  would  begin  to  see  that  life  was  failing 
and  the  harmonies  of  the  planet  replaced  by 
the  discord  of  lifeless  forces  —  storming,  crush 
ing,  grinding.  And  at  last  you  would  reach 
the  threshold  of  another  world  that  you  dared 


TIME-SPIRIT  AND  ETERNAL  SPIRIT      279 

not  enter  and  that  nothing  alive  ever  faces : 
the  home  of  perpetual  frost. 

"If  you  should  rise  straight  into  the  air  from 
your  housetop  as  though  you  were  climbing 
the  side  of  a  mountain,  you  would  find  at  last 
that  you  had  ascended  to  a  height  where  the 
mountain  would  be  capped  forever  with  snow. 
For  all  round  the  earth  wherever  its  mountains 
are  high  enough,  their  summits  are  capped  with 
the  one  same  snow :  above  us  all  everywhere 
lies  the  upper  land  of  eternal  cold. 

"  Sometime  in  the  future  —  we  do  not  know 
when  —  the  spirit  of  cold  at  the  north  will 
move  southward ;  the  spirit  of  cold  at  the  south 
will  move  northward ;  the  spirit  of  cold  in  the 
upper  air  will  move  downward;  and  the  three 
will  meet,  and  for  the  earth  there  will  be  one 
whiteness  and  silence  —  rest. 

"  Little  children,  the  earth  is  burning  out  like  a 
bedroom  candle.  The  great  sun  is  but  a  longer 
candle  that  burns  out  also.  All  the  stars  are 
but  candles  that  one  by  one  go  out  in  the  dark 
ness  of  the  universe.  Now  tell  me,  you  children 
of  this  house,  you  children  of  the  earth,  for  I 
make  no  difference  among  you  and  ask  each  the 
same  question  :  when  the  earth  and  the  sun  and 
the  stars  are  burnt  out  like  your  bedroom 
candles,  where  in  that  darkness  will  you  be? 


280        THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Where  will  all  the  children  of  the  earth  be 
then?" 

And  now  at  last  the  Great  Solemn  Night  drew 
apart  its  curtains  of  mystery  and  revealed  its 
spiritual  summit. 

Out  of  these  ordinary  American  children  had 
all  but  died  the  last  vestiges  of  the  superstitions 
of  their  time  and  of  earlier  ages.  They  were 
new  children  of  a  new  land  in  a  new  time ;  and 
they  were  the  voices  of  fresh  millions  —  voices 
that  rose  and  floated  far  and  wide  as  a  revela 
tion  of  the  spirit  of  man  stripped  of  worn-out 
rags  and  standing  forth  in  its  divine  nakedness 
—  winged  and  immortal. 

"I  know  where  I  shall  be/'  said  the  lad  whose 
ideal  of  this  life  turned  toward  strength  that 
would  not  fail  and  truth  that  could  not  waver. 

"I  know  where  I  shall  be/7  said  the  little  soul 
whose  earthly  ideal  was  selfishness :  who  had 
within  herself  humanity's  ideal  that  hereafter 
somewhere  in  the  universe  all  desires  will  be 
gratified. 

"I  know  where  I  shall  be,"  said  the  little  soul 
whose  earthly  ideal  was  the  quieting  of  the 
world's  pain :  who  had  vague  notions  of  a  land 
where  none  would  be  sick  and  none  suffer. 

"I  know  where  I  shall  be/'  said  the  little  soul 
whose  ideal  of  life  was  the  gathering  and  keeping 


TIME-SPIRIT  AND  ETERNAL  SPIRIT      281 

of  all  beautiful  things  that  none  should  be  lost 
and  that  none  should  change. 

Then  in  the  same  spirit  in  which  the  group  of 
them  had  carried  on  their  drama  of  the  night 
they  now  asked  him :  — 

" Where  will  you  be?" 

For  a  while  there  was  no  answer,  and  when  at 
length  the  answer  came  it  was  low  indeed :  — 

"  Wherever  the  earth's  children  are,  may  I  be 
there  with  them! " 

As  the  vast  modern  cathedral  organ  can  be 
traced  back  through  centuries  to  the  throat  of 
a  dry  reed  shaken  with  its  fellows  by  the  wind 
on  the  banks  of  some  ancient  river,  so  out  of  the 
throats  of  these  children  began  once  more  the 
chant  of  ages  —  that  deep  majestical  organ-roll 
of  humanity. 

The  darkened  parlor  of  the  Kentucky  farm 
house  became  the  plain  where  shepherds  watched 
their  flocks  —  it  became  the  Mount  of  Trans 
figuration  —  it  became  Calvary  —  it  became 
the  Apocalypse.  It  became  the  chorus  out  of 
all  lands,  out  of  all  ages  :  — 

"And  there  were  shepherds  —  The  Lord  is  my 
shepherd  —  Unto  us  a  child  is  born  —  I  know 
that  my  Redeemer  liveth  —  /  know  in  whom  I  have 
believed  —  In  my  Father's  house  are  many  man 
sions  —  I  go  to  prepare  a  place  for  you  —  Where 


282         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

/  am  you  may  be  also  —  The  earth  shall  pass 
away,  but  my  word  will  not  pass  away  —  Now  is 
Christ  risen  from  the  dead  —  Trailing  clouds  of 
glory  do  we  come  from  God  Who  is  our  home  — 
Thou  wilt  not  leave  us  in  the  dust  —  Sunset 
and  evening  star,  and  one  clear  call  for  me  —  My 
Pilot  face  to  face  when  I  have  crost  the  bar  — " 

In  the  room  was  the  spiritual  hymn  of  the 
whole  earth  from  the  beginning  until  now :  that 
somewhere  in  the  universe  there  is  a  Father  and 
a  Fatherland ;  that  on  a  dying  planet  under  a 
dying  sun  amid  myriads  of  dying  stars  there  is 
something  that  does  not  die  —  the  Youth  of 
Man.  In  that  youth  all  that  had  been  best  in 
him  will  come  to  fullest  life ;  all  that  was  worst 
will  have  dropped  away. 

The  room  was  very  still  awhile. 

Then  upon  its  intense  stillness  there  broke  a 
sound  —  faint,  far  away  through  the  snow- 
thickened  air  —  a  melody  of  coming  sleigh-bells. 
All  heard,  all  listened. 

"  Hark,  hark!  Do  you  hear!  Listen!  They 
are  coming  for  me!  They're  coming!" 

The  Tree  shook  as  he  who  was  sitting  under 
its  branches  rose  to  his  feet  with  these  words. 

"That  is  father's  sleigh  :  I  know  those  bells : 
those  are  our  sleigh-bells.  That  is  father ! " 
said  a  grave  boy  excitedly. 


TIME-SPIRIT  AND  ETERNAL  SPIRIT      283 

"Ah!  Is  that  what  you  think  7  hear  !  Then 
indeed  it  is  time  for  me  to  be  going !" 

There  was  a  rustling  of  the  boughs  of  the 
Christmas  Tree  as  though  the  guest  were 
leaving. 

Nearer,  nearer,  nearer,  along  the  turnpike 
came  the  sound  of  the  bells.  At  the  front  gate 
the  sound  suddenly  ceased. 

"They're  waiting  for  me  !"  said  a  voice  from 
behind  the  Tree  as  it  moved  away  in  the  direc 
tion  of  the  chimney. 

Then  all  heard  something  more  startling  still. 

The  sleigh  was  approaching  the  house.  Out 
of  the  silence  and  the  darkness  of  Christmas 
Eve  there  was  travelling  toward  the  house  an 
other  story  —  the  drama  of  a  man's  life. 

At  the  distance  of  a  few  hundred  yards  the 
sound  of  the  sleigh-bells,  borne  softly  into  the 
room  and  to  the  rapt  listeners,  showed  that  the 
driver  had  turned  out  of  the  main  drive  and 
begun  to  encircle  the  house  by  that  path  which 
enclosed  it  as  within  a  ring  —  within  the  symbol 
of  the  eternal. 

Under  old  trees  now  snow-laden,  past  the 
flower-beds  of  summer,  past  the  long  branches 
of  flowering  shrubs  and  of  roses  that  no  longer 
scattered  their  petals,  but  now  dropped  the 
flowers  of  the  sky,  past  thoughts  and  memories, 


284        THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

it  made  its  way :  as  for  one  who  doubles  back 
upon  the  track  of  experience  with  a  new  purpose 
and  revisits  the  past  as  he  turns  away  from  it 
toward  another  future.  Through  the  darkness, 
across  the  fresh  snow,  on  this  night  of  the  anni 
versary  of  home  life,  there  and  on  this  final 
Christmas  Eve  after  which  all  would  soon  vanish, 
he  drew  this  band  —  binding  together  all  the 
lives  there  grouped  —  putting  about  them  the 
ring  of  oneness. 

That  mournful  melody  of  secrecy  and  dark 
ness  began  to  die  out.  Fainter  and  fainter  it 
pulsed  through  the  air.  At  the  gate  it  was 
barely  heard  and  then  it  was  not  heard :  was 
it  gone  or  was  it  waiting  there  ? 

By  the  chimney-side  there  were  faint  noises. 

"He  is  gone  !"  whispered  Elizabeth  with  one 
intense  breath. 


WHEN  A   FATHER   FINDS   OUT   ABOUT   A   SON 

CHRISTMAS  had  passed,  bringing  up  the  train 
of  its  predecessors  —  the  merry  and  sad  parade 
of  the  years. 

It  departed  a  little  changed,  and  it  left  the 
whole  world  a  little  changed  by  the  new  work  of 
new  children  —  by  that  innumerable  army  of 
the  young  who  are  ever  usurping  the  earth  from 
the  old ;  who  successively  refashion  it  in  their 
own  image,  and  in  turn  growing  old  themselves 
leave  it  to  the  young  again  to  refashion  still 
further :  leaving  it  always  to  the  child,  the  de 
stroyer  and  saviour  of  the  race. 

And  yet  it  is  the  Child  that  amid  all  changes 
believes  that  it  will  escape  all  change. 

Christmas  had  passed,  and  human  nature  had 
settled  once  more  to  routine  and  commonplace, 
starting  to  travel  across  another  restful  desert 
of  ordinary  days  before  it  should  reach  another 
exhausting  oasis  of  the  unusual.  The  young 
broke  or  threw  away  or  forgot  their  toys ;  the 
285 


286         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

old  lifted  once  more  to  their  backs  familiar  bur 
dens  with  a  kind  of  fretful  or  patient  liking  for 
them. 

The  sun  began  to  return  with  his  fresh  and 
ancient  smiling.  For  a  while  after  Christmas 
snows  were  deeper  and  dryer,  but  then  began  to 
fall  more  rarely  and  melt  more  swiftly.  Feb 
ruary  turned  its  unfinished  work  over  to  March, 
and  March  received  it,  and  among  other  things 
brought  to  its  service  winds  and  daffodils.  The 
last  flakes  of  snow  as  they  sank  through  the  sod 
passed  the  snowdrop  pushing  upward  —  the 
passing  of  the  snowdrops  of  winter  and  of  spring. 
In  the  woods  wherever  there  was  mistletoe  — 
that  undying  pledge  of  verdure  into  which 
naturalists  of  old  believed  that  the  whole  spirit 
of  the  tree  had  retreated  for  safety  from  the 
storm  —  wherever  there  was  mistletoe,  it  began 
to  withdraw  from  sight  and  hide  itself  amid 
young  leaves  bursting  forth  everywhere  — 
universal  annunciation  that  what  had  seemed 
dead  yet  lived.  Out  of  the  ground  things 
sprouted  and  rose  that  had  never  lived  before  ; 
but  on  old  stocks  also,  as  on  the  tops  of  old  trees 
about  the  doctor's  house,  equally  there  was 
spring.  For  while  there  is  life,  there  is  youth ; 
and  as  long  as  there  is  youth,  there  is  growth. 
Life  is  youth,  wholly  youth;  and  death  is  not 


WHEN  A  FATHER  FINDS  OUT  287 

the  end  of  age  nor  of  old  age,  but  only  the  ending 
of  youth :  of  briefer  youth  or  extended  youth, 
but  always  of  youth. 

Ploughing  began  in  the  Kentucky  fields,  and 
after  the  plough  the  sower  went  forth  to  sow. 
Dr.  Birney  as  he  drove  along  turnpikes  and 
lanes  looked  out  of  his  buggy  and  saw  him.  Be 
side  him  was  his  son,  and  the  doctor  was  busy 
sowing  also,  sowing  the  seeds  of  right  suggestion. 
Sometimes  they  met  child  patients  whom  the 
doctor  had  brought  through  the  epidemic,  they 
stopped  and  chatted  triumphantly. 

Altogether  it  was  springtime  for  the  doctor 
for  more  reasons  than  one.  There  was  a  change 
in  him.  He  looked  younger  and  he  was  younger. 
The  weight  as  of  a  glacier  had  melted  away 
from  him.  A  new  verdure  of  joy  started  forth. 
The  beauty  and  happiness  of  the  country  about 
him  found  counterpart  and  response  in  his  own 
nature. 

One  day  as  the  two  were  driving  across  a  fine 
growing  landscape  the  doctor  was  trying  to  im 
part  a  larger  idea  of  service;  and  so  he  was 
saying  that  there  were  three  fathers  :  he  was  the 
first  father  —  to  be  looked  to  for  counsel  and 
guidance  and  protection :  this  father  was  to  be 
served  loyally;  he  must  be  fought  for  if  there 
were  need,  died  for.  But  by  and  by  the  first 


288         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

father  would  step  aside  and  a  second  take  his 
place,  much  greater,  more  powerful  —  the 
fatherland.  For  this  second  father  also  his 
listener  must  be  ready  to  fight,  to  die;  he  must 
look  to  it  for  guidance  and  safety.  Then  again 
in  time  the  second  father  would  disappear  and 
the  third  Father  would  take  him  in  hand  —  the 
Father  of  all  things. 

"And  then  I'll  have  to  fight  and  die  for  the 
third  Father." 

"I  am  not  so  sure  about  the  fighting  and  the 
dying/7  said  the  doctor  with  a  quick,  happy 
laugh. 

"And  after  the  third  Father  —  who  gets  me 
next  ?  When  He  is  done  with  me,  then  what  ?  " 

"I  am  not  so  sure  about  that,  either,"  ad 
mitted  the  doctor.  "The  third  Father  will  keep 
you  a  long  time ;  and  as  all  the  troops  are  his, 
there  may  be  nobody  to  fight :  but  He'll  make 
you  a  good  soldier!" 

Thus  during  these  days,  each  in  his  own  way 
was  putting  forth  new  growth;  and  now  there 
arrived  a  morning  when  the  son  was  to  show 
how  well  grown  he  was  and  how  faithfully 
things  sown  in  him  were  maturing. 

At  breakfast  for  some  lack  of  fine  manners  he 
received  instructions  from  his  mother.  By  way 


WHEN  A  FATHER  FINDS  OUT  289 

of  'grateful  acknowledgment,  he  laid  down  his 
knife  and  fork  and  stiffened  his  back  against 
his  chair  and  looked  at  her  steadily :  — 

"I  don't  see  what  you  have  to  do  with  my 
manners/'  he  said,  as  though  the  opportunity 
had  come  at  last  for  him  to  speak  his  mind  on 
the  family  situation.  "  You've  spoiled  every 
thing  for  us.  You  ought  never  to  have  been 
my  mother.  Mrs.  Ousley  ought  to  have  been 
my  mother."  And  then  he  looked  at  his  father 
for  approval  that  he  had  brought  the  truth  out 
at  last. 

The  doctor  at  the  beginning  of  that  utterance 
had  started  toward  him  with  the  quick  movement 
of  one  who  tries  to  shut  a  door  through  which  a 
hurricane  has  begun  to  rush.  Now  without  a 
word  he  rose  from  the  table  and  grasping  the  boy 
by  the  wrist  led  him  from  the  room. 

As  the  door  closed  behind  them,  a  loud  ringing 
laugh  was  heard  as  though  the  two  were  going  off 
to  enjoy  something  together.  Then  another  door 
was  closed,  and  then  there  resounded  through  the 
silence  of  all  the  rooms  a  loud  startled  scream ; 
not  so  much  of  pain  but  of  bewilderment,  of 
amazement,  of  grief  of  mind,  of  a  puzzle  in  the 
brain.  Then  there  were  other  sounds,  other 
sounds,  other  sounds.  And  then  one  long  con 
tinued  sound  —  low,  piteous,  inconsolable. 


290         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

The  spring  advanced;  tide  of  new  life  over 
flowed  the  land.  Dr.  Birney  and  his  boy  were 
seen  driving  on  all  bright  days :  not  toward  the 
sick  necessarily ;  sometimes  they  were  on  their 
way  to  a  creek  or  pond  to  fish. 

There  was  a  tragic  change  in  the  doctor,  and 
there  was  a  grave  change  in  his  son.  The  father's 
face  began  to  show  the  responsibility  of  handling 
a  case  that  was  becoming  more  difficult ;  on  a 
landscape  of  growing  things  —  growing  with  the 
irresistible  force  of  Nature,  how  was  he  to  arrest 
the  growth  of  things  in  the  nature  of  a  child? 
And  the  boy  was  beginning  in  his  way  to  con 
sider  the  danger  of  too  much  devotion  to  a 
father,  too  blind  an  imitation  of  him.  In  his 
way  he  was  trying  to  get  clear  hold  of  this  prob 
lem  of  how  to  imitate  and  how  not  to  imitate. 
Something  was  gone  between  them;  not  affec 
tion,  but  peace.  Each  was  puzzled  by  the  other, 
and  each  knew  the  other  was  puzzled.  How 
completely  they  jerked  shining  fish  out  of  the 
lucent  water ;  but  as  each  dropped  his  hook  into 
the  sea  of  character,  neither  felt  assured  what 
he  might  draw  up.  At  times  in  the  doctor's  eyes 
there  was  an  expression  too  sad  to  be  seen  in 
any  father's ;  and  in  the  boy's  was  the  look  of 
the  first  deterioration  in  life  —  the  defeat  of  be 
ing  punished  for  what  he  thought  was  right. 


WHEN  A  FATHER  FINDS  OUT  291 

Late  one  cold  rainy  afternoon  in  April  there 
were  several  buggies  in  Dr.  Birney's  yard,  three 
of  them  belonging  to  physicians  called  into 
consultation  from  adjoining  count}r  seats.  One 
of  the  phenomena  which  baffle  the  science  of 
medicine  had  appeared  on  the  doctor's  threshold 

—  the  sporadic  case.     Long  after  an  epidemic 
is  over,  by  an  untraceable  path  infection  arrives. 
It  is  quite  as  if  a  bird  that  cannot  migrate  should 
be  found  unearned  on  the  opposite  coast  of  a  sea. 

There  was  little  need  of  the  consultation ;  the 
disease  was  well  known,  the  treatment  was  that 
agreed  upon  by  the  profession;  Dr.  Birney  him 
self  was  the  most  successful  practitioner.  A 
well-known  disease,  an  agreed-upon  treatment 

—  but  a  rate  of  mortality. 

Others  came,  not  called :  friends,  neighbors, 
members  of  his  Masonic  order.  During  all 
these  years  he  had  slowly  won  the  heart  of  the 
whole  people,  and  now  it  turned  to  him. 

The  doctor  watched  the  progress  of  the  case 
like  one  who  must  now  bring  to  bear  the  re 
sources  of  a  lifetime  and  of  a  life;  who  must 
cast  the  total  of  skill  and  of  influence  on  the  side 
of  the  vital  forces. 

As  the  disease  ran  on  in  its  course,  to  him 
it  became  more  and  more  a  question  of  how 


292        THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

the  issue  would  turn  upon  so-called  little  things, 
as  the  recovery  of  a  patient  is  probably  some 
times  secured  by  merely  turning  him  from  side 
to  side,  from  back  to  stomach. 

It  was  his  problem  how  to  drop  into  one  scale 
or  the  other  scale  of  the  childish  balances  some 
almost  imponderable  weight,  as  when  good  ti 
dings  arriving  save  a  life,  as  when  bad  news  held 
back  saves  a  life;  as  when  the  removal  of  an 
injustice  from  a  sensitive  spirit  saves  a  life ;  as 
when  the  healing  of  a  wound  of  the  mind  in  the 
very  extremity  saves  a  life. 

He  felt  that  before  him  now  were  oscillating 
those  delicate  balances,  never  quite  in  equilib 
rium  :  a  joy  dropped  into  one,  a  sorrow  dropped 
into  the  other  —  some  pennyweight  of  new 
peace,  some  grain  of  additional  worry !  The 
shadows  collected  on  one  side,  sunbeams 
gathered  on  the  other. 

"Now  then,"  he  thought  within  himself, 
"now  then  is  the  hour  when  I  must  be  sun 
light  to  him  —  not  shadow  !" 

He  watched  the  look  in  his  little  boy's  eyes ; 
he  noted  the  presence  of  things  weighing  heav 
ily.  There  was  a  tangle,  a  perplexity,  a  tossing 
of  the  head  from  side  to  side  on  the  pillow  —  as 
if  to  turn  quickly  away  from  things  seen. 

"Do  I  cast  a  light  on  him?     Do  I  cast  a 


WHEN  A  FATHER  FINDS  OUT  293 

shadow  ?  Does  my  presence  here  by  him  bring 
tranquillity,  rest,  sound  sleep  ?  As  he  sees  into 
me,  does  what  he  sees  strengthen?  Was  his 
chastisement  that  morning  a  sunbeam  ?  It  had 
not  struck  him  like  a  sunbeam  ;  it  had  not  fallen 
in  that  way !  The  chill  hi  the  house  all  these 
years  —  had  that  been  vital  warmth  to  him  ?" 

There  now  came  out  the  meaning  of  all  that 
exaggeratedly  careful  training  :  the  exercise,  the 
outdoor  life,  even-thing :  it  was  the  attempt  to 
develop  robust  health  on  a  foundation  not 
robust :  even-thing  went  back  to  the  poor  start : 
each  child  had  been  born  delicate. 

At  intervals  during  the  illness  there  were  bits 
of  talk.  One  night  the  doctor  rose  from  the 
bedside  and  brought  a  glass  of  pure  fresh  water 
and  administered  a  spoonful  and  watched  the 
swallowing  and  the  expression :  — 

"Does  it  taste  bitter?" 

"Pretty  bitter.  You  can't  say  that  I  didn't 
take  your  nasty  old  doses,  can  you?" 

"Don't  talk  !    You  mustn't  talk." 

•Td  feel  better  if  I  did  talk  —  if  I  could  get 
it  out  of  me." 

' '  Then  talk  !    What  is  it  ?    Out  with  ft !" 

But  the  face  was  jerked  quickly  away  with 
that  motion  of  wishing  to  look  hi  another  direc 
tion. 


294        THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

Some  nights  there  was  delirium.  Through 
the  brain  rolled  clouds  of  fantasies :  — 

"  ...  If  I  knew  how  it  comes  out  between  you 
and  Mrs.  Ousley.  .  .  ." 

On  these  dark  rolling  clouds  the  father  tried 
to  throw  a  beam  of  peace :  and  it  was  no  mo 
ment  to  hold  back  any  of  the  truth :  — 

"  It  is  all  over!  .  .  .     There  is  nothing  of  it" 

"  I  wish  I  had  known  it  sooner:  it  bothered 
me.  .  .  ." 

At  another  time  more  fantasies  :  — 

"  .  .  .  Not  on  the  cheek!  You're  no  father 
of  mine  if  it's  on  the  cheek.  .  .  ." 

At  another  time  :  — 

"  .  .  .  Suppose  I  never  grow  up  and  Eliza- 
beth  does.  How  is  that?  I  wouldn't  like  that. 
How  do  you  straighten  that  out?" 

"  I  can't  straighten  that  out." 

"  Then  I  can't  straighten  it  out,  either." 

"So  young — so  young  !"  muttered  the  doctor. 
"I  was  pretty  old!" 

One  warm  night  the  doctor  walked  out  of 
doors.  The  south  wind  blew  softly  in  his  face, 
lifting  his  hair. 

All  round  the  house  in  yard  and  garden  and 
farther  away  in  the  woods  and  fields  everything 


WHEN  A  FATHER  FINDS  OUT  295 

was  growing.  It  was  a  night  when  the  earth 
seemed  given  up  to  the  festival  of  youth :  it 
was  the  hour  of  youth :  of  its  triumph  in 
Nature. 

Little  aware  of  where  his  feet  carried  him,  he 
was  now  in  the  garden  and  now  in  the  yard. 
And  hi  the  garden,  low  down,  how  sturdy  little 
things  were  growing :  the  little  radishes,  the 
young  beets,  the  beans  —  those  children  of  the 
earth,  flawless  in  their  descent  and  environ 
ment  —  with  what  unarrestable  force  they  were 
growing !  Afterwards  in  the  yard  he  passed 
some  beds  of  lilies  of  the  valley  —  most  deli 
cate  breath  of  all  flowers :  how  fragile  but  how 
strong,  how  safe  in  their  unsullied  parentage,  in 
their  ample  wedlock  ! 

All  about  the  house  the  steady  rush  of  the 
young  !  And  within  it  —  as  a  mausoleum  — 
the  youth  of  all  youth  for  him  —  stopped  ! 

Most  obedient  and  well-trained  and  irrespon 
sible  Death  !  Thou  hast  no  grudge  against  us 
nor  bearest  toward  any  of  us  malice  nor  ill-will ! 
Thou  stayest  away  as  long  as  thou  canst  and 
never  comest  till  thou  must !  Thou  visitant 
without'  will  of  thine  own  !  Quickening  Death, 
that  also  givest  to  the  will  of  another  not  the 
shock  of  death,  but  the  shock  of  new  life  ! 


296         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

There  loomed  in  the  darkness  before  the 
doctor  as  he  wandered  about  a  true  picture : 
an  ancient  people  in  an  ancient  land  weighed 
upon  by  their  transgressions  which  they  could 
neither  transfer  to  one  another  nor  lay  upon 
mother  earth.  So  once  a  year  one  of  them  in 
behalf  of  himself  and  the  rest  chose  an  exemplar 
of  their  faithful  flocks  and  herds,  and  folding 
his  hands  upon  its  head  laid  upon  it  the  burden 
of  guilt  and  shame,  and  then  had  it  led  out  of 
the  camp  —  to  wild  waste  places  where  no  one 
dwelt  —  "to  a  land  not  inhabited." 

.  .  .  And  now  he  had  sent  away  his  son  into 
the  eternal  with  his  own  life  faults  and  failings 
on  him.  .  .  . 

He  turned  back  into  the  house  —  passed 
through  the  sick  room  —  passed  through  his 
library,  passed  the  portrait  of  his  wife  in  her 
bridal  veil  —  passed  down  the  hall  —  knocked 
at  her  door  and  opened  it  wide  and  stood  in  the 
opening :  — 

".  .  .  My  wife,  I  have  come  to  you  .  .  . ! 
Will  you  come  to  him  .  .  .  ? " 


VI 

LIVING   OUT  THE   YEARS 

AN  afternoon  of  early  summer,  at  the  edge  of 
a  quiet  Kentucky  town,  on  the  slope  of  a  grassy 
hillside  within  one  of  those  dreamy  enclosures 
where  our  earthly  dreams  are  ended,  the  sun 
light  began  to  descend  slantingly  for  the  first 
tune  —  as  on  white  silvery  wings  —  upon  a 
newly  placed  memorial  for  a  child.  Across  the 
top  of  the  memorial  was  carved  a  single  legend 
hoary  with  the  guilt  and  shame  of  men  and 
women  of  centuries  long  since  gone.  Beside 
the  memorial  stood  a  young  evergreen  as  the 
living  forest  substitute  of  him  sleeping  below : 
it  was  of  about  his  age  and  height.  The  ancient 
stone  with  its  legend  of  atonement  and  the 
young  tree  thus  brought  together  stood  there 
as  if  the  offending  and  the  innocent  had  come 
to  one  of  their  meeting-places  —  and  in  lif e  they 
meet  so  often. 

Tree  and  mound  and  marble  stood  within  an 
open  enclosure  of  turf  encircled  at  a  score  of 

297 


298         THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

yards  by  old  evergreens  touching  one  an 
other. 

Early  in  the  afternoon  two  of  these  evergreens 
had  some  of  their  lower  interlapping  boughs 
softly  pushed  apart,  and  into  the  open  space 
there  stepped  excitedly  a  frail  little  figure  in 
a  frock  of  forget-me-not  blue.  Just  inside  the 
boughs  which  folded  behind  her  like  living  doors 
so  that  she  was  screened  from  view,  she  hesitated 
for  a  moment  and  looked  about  her  for  the 
dreaded  spot  which  she  knew  she  was  doomed 
to  find.  Having  located  it,  she  advanced  with 
uncertain  footsteps  as  though  there  could  be  no 
straight  path  for  her  to  the  scene  of  such  a  loss. 

When  she  reached  it,  she  sat  hurriedly  down, 
dropped  her  bouquet  on  the  grass  beside  herself, 
jerked  off  her  spectacles  and  pressing  her  hands 
to  her  eyes,  burst  into  an  agony  of  weeping. 
Long  she  sat  there,  helpless  in  her  anguish. 
Once  holding  her  hand  before  her  eyes,  she  drew 
from  her  pocket  a  fresh  handkerchief ;  she  had 
brought  two  :  she  knew  her  tears  would  be  many. 

At  last  she  dried  her  red  swollen  eyes  and 
brushed  back  from  her  temples  the  long  sunny 
strands  of  wind-woven  hair;  she  put  on  her 
glasses  and  picked  up  her  little  round  brilliant 
country  picnic  bouquet;  and  with  quivering 
lips  and  quivering  nostrils  looked  where  she  must 


LIVING  OUT  THE   YEARS  299 

place  it.  With  tear- wet  forefinger  and  thumb 
she  forced  the  flowers  apart  on  one  side  and 
peeped  at  the  card  pushed  deep  within  — 
"From  Elizabeth." 

She  got  up  then  and  went  slowly  away,  fading 
out  behind  the  pines  like  a  little  wandering  strip 
of  heaven's  remembering  blue. 

Later  in  the  afternoon  the  sound  of  slowly 
approaching  wheels  sounded  on  the  gravel  of 
the  drive  that  wound  near :  then  a  carriage 
stopped.  A  minute  afterwards  there  appeared 
within  the  open  enclosure  a  woman  in  black, 
thickly  veiled,  bringing  an  armful  of  flowers. 
Some  yards  behind  her  a  man  followed  in  deep 
mourning  also,  bareheaded,  his  hat  in  his  hand 
at  his  side  —  the  soldierly  figure  of  a  man  squar 
ing  himself  against  adversity,  but  stricken  and 
bowed  at  his  post.  They  did  not  advance  side 
by  side  as  those  who  walk  most  in  unison  when 
they  are  most  bereaved  and  draw  closer  together 
as  fate  draws  nearer. 

When  she  reached  the  mound,  she  turned 
toward  him  and  waited ;  and  when  he  came  up, 
without  a  word  she  held  the  flowers  out  to  him. 
She  held  them  out  to  him  with  silence  and  with 
what  a  face  under  her  veil  —  with  what  a  look 
out  of  the  wife's  and  mother's  eyes  —  there  was 


300        THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

none  to  see.  He  gently  pushed  the  flowers  back 
toward  her,  mutely  asking  of  her  some  charity 
for  the  sake  of  all;  so  that,  consenting,  she 
turned  to  arrange  them.  As  she  did  so,  she 
became  conscious  at  last  of  what  hitherto  she 
had  perceived  with  her  eyes  only :  the  happy 
little  bouquet  of  a  child  left  on  the  sod.  And 
suddenly  there  fell  upon  her  veil  and  hung  en 
meshed  in  it  some  heavy  tears,  of  which,  how 
ever,  she  took  no  notice.  But  she  disposed  the 
flowers  so  that  they  would  not  interfere  with  — 
not  quite  reach  to  —  that  token  of  a  child's 
love  which  had  never  known  and  now  would 
never  know  time's  disillusion  or  earth's  dis 
enchantment. 

When  she  had  finished,  she  remained  standing 
looking  at  it  all.  He  moved  around  to  her  side ; 
and  they  both  with  final  impulse  let  their  eyes 
meet  upon  the  ancient  line  chiselled  across  the 
marble :  — 

"®nto  a  Slant*  Hot  Inljabttetu" 

He  broke  the  silence :  — 

"I  chose  that  for  him:  it  is  the  truth:  he 
has  been  sent  away,  bearing  more  than  was  his." 

She  looked  at  it  a  long  time,  and  then  bowed 
as  if  to  set  the  seal  of  her  judgment  upon  the 
seal  of  his  judgment.  And,  moved  by  some 


LIVING  OUT  THE   YEARS  301 

pitiless  instinct  to  look  at  things  as  they  are,  — 
the  discipline  of  her  years,  —  with  a  quiet  res 
olute  hand  she  lifted  her  veil  away  from  her 
face.  It  was  a  face  of  that  proud  and  self- 
ennobled  beauty  that  anywhere  in  the  world 
gives  to  the  beholder  of  it  a  lesson  in  the  sublimer 
elements  of  human  character.  There  was  no 
feature  of  reproach  nor  line  nor  shadow  of  bit 
terness,  but  the  chastened  peace  of  a  nature  that 
has  learned  to  live  upon  itself,  after  having  first 
cast  itself  passionately  upon  others;  and  that 
indestructible  strength  which  rests  not  upon 
what  life  can  give,  but  upon  what  life  cannot 
take  away :  she  stood  revealed  there  as  what  in 
truth  she  was  —  heroic  daughter  of  the  greater 
vanished  people. 

She  dropped  her  veil  and  turned  away  toward 
the  carriage.  He  drew  to  her  side  and  once  — 
hesitatingly,  desolately  —  he  put  his  arm  around 
her.  She  did  not  yield,  she  did  not  decline ;  she 
walked  with  him  as  though  she  walked  alone. 
During  all  the  barren  bitter  years  she  had  not 
been  upheld  by  his  arm :  her  staff  and  her 
support  had  been  her  ideal  of  herself  and  of  her 
people  —  after  she  had  faced  the  ruined  ideal  of 
their  lives  together  and  her  lost  ideal  of  him. 
It  was  yet  too  soon  for  his  arm  —  or  it  was  too 
late  altogether. 


302         THE   DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

He  withdrew  it;  and  he  continued  to  walk 
beside  her  as  a  man  who  has  lost  among  women 
both  her  whom  he  had  most  wished  to  have  and 
her  whom  he  might  most  have  had.  And  so 
they  passed  from  the  scene. 

But  throughout  that  long  obscurity  amid 
which  we  are  appointed  to  pass  our  allotted 
years,  it  is  not  the  order  of  nature  that  all  stars 
within  us  should  rise  at  once.  There  are  some 
that  are  seen  early,  that  move  rapidly  across 
our  sky,  and  are  beheld  no  more  —  youth's 
flaming  planets,  the  influence  of  which  upon  us 
often  leaves  us  doubting  whether  they  were 
baneful  or  benign.  There  are  other  lights  which 
come  out  to  shine  upon  our  paths  and  guide  us 
later ;  and,  thanks  be  to  nature,  until  the  very 
last  new  stars  appear.  Those  who  early  have 
left  them  they  love  can  never  know  what  late 
radiance  may  illumine  the  end  of  their  road. 
And  only  those  who  remain  together  to  the  end 
can  greet  the  last  splendid  beacons  that  some 
times  rise  above  the  horizon  before  the  dawn  — 
the  true  morning  stars  of  many  a  dark  and 
troubled  life. 

They  had  half  their  lives  before  them :  they 
were  growing,  unfolding  characters;  perhaps 
they  were  yet  to  find  happiness  together.  She 


LIVING  OUT  THE   YEARS  303 

had  loved  him  with  a  love  too  single  and  com 
plete,  and  she  loved  him  yet  too  well,  to  accept 
anything  from  him  a  second  time  less  than 
everything.  Happiness  was  in  store  for  them 
perhaps  —  and  more  children. 

The  working  out  of  this  lay  with  them  and 
then-  remaining  days. 

But  for  the  doctor  one  thing  had  been  worked 
out  to  the  end:  that  year  by  year  he  was  to 
drive  along  turnpikes  and  lanes  —  alone.  That 
every  spring  he  was  to  see  the  sower  go  forth 
in  the  fields ;  that  with  his  whitening  hair  he 
was  to  watch  beside  the  beds  of  sick  children; 
and  often  at  night  under  his  lamp  to  fall  asleep 
with  his  eyes  fixed  upon  The  World's  Path  of 
Lessening  Pain. 

When  the  two  were  gone,  it  was  a  still  spot 
that  afternoon  with  the  sunlight  on  the  grass. 
As  the  sun  began  to  descend,  its  rays  gradually 
left  the  earth  and  passed  upward  toward  the 
pinnacles  of  the  pines;  and  lingering  on  those 
summits  awhile,  it  finally  took  its  flight  back 
to  the  infinite.  Twilight  fell  gray;  darkness 
began  to  brood;  objects  lost  their  outlines. 
The  trees  of  the  enclosure  became  shadows ; 
these  shadows  in  time  became  as  other  realities. 
The  sturdy  young  evergreen  planted  beside  the 


304        THE  DOCTOR'S  CHRISTMAS  EVE 

boy  as  his  forest  counterpart,  having  his  shape 
and  size,  now  stood  there  as  the  lad  himself 
wrapped  in  his  overcoat  —  the  crimson-tipped 
madcap  little  fellow  who  had  gambolled  across 
the  frozen  fields  that  windy  morning  toward  his 
Christmas  Festival. 

In  this  valley  of  earth  he  stood  there  holding 
upright  for  all  to  see  the  slab  on  which  was  to  be 
read  his  brief  ended  tale :  — 


THE    END 


'""PHE     following     pages 
contain  advertisements 
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MR.  JAMES  LANE  ALLEN'S 
The  Bride  of  the  Mistletoe 

To  which  The  Doctors  Christmas  Eve  is  a  sequel,  was 
described  at  the  time  of  its  publication  as  "so  exquisite 
that  not  a  few  of  his  admirers  will  hold  it  the  best  work 
he  has  accomplished" 

"It  stands  out  in  the  midst  of  the  year's  fiction,  and 
perhaps  the  fiction  of  many  years,  as  a  thing  by  itself. 
There  is  the  spirit  of  Maeterlinck  in  these  pages  blended 
with  the  spirit  of  Hawthorne."  —  Current  Literature. 

The  English  press  was  enthusiastic,  the  London  Academy 
declaring  it  "  worth  very  many  ordinary  novels  "  ;  "  con 
ceived  in  a  fine  vision  and  developed  with  beauty " ; 
"exercising  over  us  a  strong  and  at  times  a  weird 
fascination." 

The  Literary  World  sums  up:  "We  may  assure  the 
author's  innumerable  readers  and  friends  that  in  his 
latest  book  he  has  lost  none  of  the  charm  that  first 
won  them." 

"  Exquisite  in  form,  full  of  color,  finely  finished." 

—  Record-Herald,  Chicago. 


PUBLISHED    BY 

THE   MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

Sixty-four  and  Sixty-six  Fifth  Avenue,   New  York 


MR.  JAMES  LANE  ALLEN'S  Novels 


The  Choir  Invisible 

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to  one's  spiritual  possessions."  —  San  Francisco  Chronicle. 

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The  Mettle  of  the  Pasture 

"  It  may  be  that  The  Mettle  of  the  Pasture  will  live  and  become 
a  part  of  our  literature  ;  it  certainly  will  live  far  beyond  the 
allotted  term  of  present-day  fiction.  Our  principal  concern  is 
that  it  is  a  notable  novel,  that  it  ranks  high  in  the  range  of 
American  and  English  fiction,  and  that  it  is  worth  the  reading, 
the  re-reading,  and  the  continuous  appreciation  of  those  who 
care  for  modern  literature  at  its  best."  —  E.  F.  E.  in  the  Boston 
Transcript.  Cloth,  i2mo,  $1.50 

Summer  in  Arcady     AT 

"This  story  by  James  Lane  Allen  is  one  of  the  gems  of  the 
season.  It  is  artistic  in  its  setting,  realistic  and  true  to  nature 
and  life  in  its  descriptions,  dramatic,  pathetic,  tragic,  in  its 
incidents ;  indeed,  a  veritable  masterpiece  that  must  become 
classic.  It  is  difficult  to  give  an  outline  of  the  story ;  it  is  one 
of  the  stories  which  do  not  outline  ;  it  must  be  read."  —  Boston 
Daily  Advertiser.  Cloth,  $1.25 

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SHORTER  STORIES 


The  Blue  Grass  Region  of  Kentucky 

" '  The  simple,  rural  key-note  of  life  is  still  the  sweetest,'  he 
had  written  in  the  opening  pages  of  The  Blue  Grass  Region 
of  Kentucky ;  and  it  is  this  note  which,  played  on  the  pipes 
of  Pan  in  ever-recurring  and  fresh  variations,  yields  the  sweetest 
music,  and,  touched  with  the  breath  of  his  passion  for  nature, 
is  transmuted  into  those  '  invisible  flowers  of  sound '  which  lie 
pressed  between  his  pages."  —  The  Bookman. 

Cloth,  I2m0)  illustrated,  $1.50 

Flute  and  Violin 

and  other  Kentucky  Tales  and  Romances 
"  He  takes  us  into  a  green  and  fragrant  world  in  that  Kentucky 
home  of  his  which  he  has  shared  with  us  so  genially  and  de 
lightfully  before  now.  No  one  has  made  more  of  a  native 
region  than  he  —  more  beauty  and  more  attractiveness.  He 
has  done  for  the  blue  grass  country  what  Miss  Wilkins  has 
done  for  New  England,  what  Hamlin  Garland  has  done  for 
some  parts  of  the  West."  —  Boston  Transcript. 

Cloth)  i2mO)  illustrated,  $i.jo 

A  Kentucky  Cardinal 

"A  narrative,  told  with  na'ive  simplicity  in  the  first  person,  of 
how  a  man  who  was  devoted  to  his  fruits  and  flowers  and  birds 
came  to  fall  in  love  with  a  fair  neighbor  who  treated  him  at 
first  with  whimsical  raillery  and  coquetry,  and  who  finally  put 
his  love  to  the  supreme  test."  —  New  York  Tribune. 

Cloth,  i2mo,  illustrated,  $r.oo 

Aftermath        A  Sequel  to  "  A  Kentucky  Cardinal  " 

"  The  perfect  simplicity  of  all  the  episodes,  the  gentleness  of 
spirit,  and  the  old-time  courtesy,  the  poetry  of  it  all,  with  a 
gleam  of  humor  on  almost  every  page. "  —  Life. 

Cloth)  I2ni0)  illustrated,  $1.00 

A  Kentucky  Cardinal  and  Aftermath 

In  one  volume.     Illustrated  by  Hugh  Thomson.     $2.50 

Two  Gentlemen  of  Kentucky          Fifty  cents 


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YB  72704 


THE  UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


